by Sean Platt
“Why not?”
“For one, how am I supposed to get in? The computer controlling the lock is inside the door or behind it. But secondly, I don’t know anything about it.”
Morgan pulled on the door. It wasn’t just closed and locked; its very substance felt solid, as if its core were concrete or solid steel. “But you cut the power.”
“This system is solid. Cutting the power isn’t enough.”
“You cut the redundant power, too.”
Terrence shrugged again.
Morgan turned toward the approaching footsteps, coming from the kitchen behind him. It was the kid, Cameron. Morgan liked Cameron better than Terrence, despite him being a thug with no special skills. He and Dan, the big mother Cameron had shown up with, seemed like scrappers. Maybe they had a gay thing going on; Morgan didn’t know or care.
Cameron had a screw loose, and that was all that mattered. Morgan liked a little crazy in the people he worked with.
Some dumbass from the tents-and-hippies set camping around the house had questioned Morgan’s authority to cordon off the estate’s west side at the nook where they found the exhaust pipe. The same dumbass had complained when Dan and Vincent dug around the pipe, searching for treasure. Morgan didn’t like being questioned. But before he could so much as threaten the dumbass into submission, Cameron had leaped on the guy and beaten him until there were maybe three breaths left in his body. So yeah, Cameron was the coolest of the bunch, in Morgan’s mind. A real team player.
“That pipe over on the side of the house is still cold, Morgan,” Cameron said, his breath a bit short. That was another thing Morgan liked about Cameron. The kid hustled, even if only from the home’s side to the kitchen door.
Terrence turned to face Cameron. Then finally — blessedly — he removed his oversized sunglasses and tucked them into his vest pocket.
“Of course it’s cold,” he said. “What, did you think the generator was going to kick on?”
Dan and Christopher entered the kitchen behind Cameron. Outside, in the fading light, Morgan could see a few of the gathered hippies watching them enter the kitchen. They’d looked askance at Morgan and his men since their arrival, but those hippies out there wouldn’t say dick. Even at the end of the world, tough ideas failed at the finish line. Morgan’s gun didn’t stop them. Many people in the crowd had guns. But with their pussy attitudes, those guns might as well be sticks. Morgan was willing to use his weapons — even for the hell of it. Most people weren’t as cool with violence. Morgan was, and those asswipes knew it from watching his walk.
Dan and Christopher traded a glance. They seemed as if they might report the same thing as Cameron: that the exhaust pipe sticking out of the foundation was still cold, and they were surprised that Terrence had been right — that the machine on the other end of that pipe was off and would remain that way.
“I told you, I clipped off the switch,” said Terrence. “The generator won’t kick on as long as it doesn’t realize power from the windmill and solar has been interrupted.” He looked at them, annoyed. You didn’t question Terrence’s technical know-how. Even Morgan, who was otherwise in charge, knew that.
Christopher said, “I’m not even convinced that’s a generator on the other end of that pipe.”
“It’s a generator,” said Terrence. “There’s a pipe sticking out of the wall.”
“Maybe it’s a furnace,” Christopher said.
“It’s not a furnace,” Terrence retorted.
“How do you know?”
Terrence rubbed his forehead as if Christopher’s stupidity hurt him. “It’s not a big enough pipe to be a furnace. It’s also not insulated. There’s not nearly enough clearance, and it turns a ninety-degree angle within six inches of the foundation. No zoning inspector in the world would okay that, and this is new construction.” Terrence gestured toward the unfinished kitchen.
Christopher chewed his lip. “We’re wasting our time here.”
“How so?” Terrence asked.
“Digging down the side of the house to where the pipe enters the foundation all goddamned day. Jimmying with those wires and junctions.” Christopher wiped his nose. “We should be fleecing these fucking hippies. Hell, they want to be taken; you hear them serenading the aliens with Kumbaya. Why wait not make it easy on them? We could take shit from them right now.”
Terrence put a hand on Christopher’s arm. Christopher flinched then settled. Terrence glanced at Morgan then gave Christopher his “shut your mouth because I’m trying to save you from getting shot by the boss” look.
“We’ve searched the house,” he said, still watching Christopher’s eyes. “There’s no basement access inside, and yet there’s clearly an exhaust pipe coming out of the ground over there. So what did we do, Christopher?”
“We dug.”
Terrence nodded. “We dug. And we found out that the pipe goes right into the foundation. Think about that for a minute. What does a pipe going through a house’s foundation say to you?”
“Who cares?”
“There are no crawlspace vents around this place. No cellar access on the outside. No basement staircase. And yet still, there’s clearly something under the house. Some machine worthy of what’s clearly an exhaust pipe.”
“How do you know that’s what it is?” Christopher asked, even though Terrence had just told him.
“Shut up, Christopher,” said a new voice.
Morgan looked up to see Vincent enter the kitchen. Vincent was all muscle, with tattoos on dark skin like Terrence. Vincent had run the group before Morgan arrived to show them what a real boss looked like. He usually fell into line under Morgan’s orders but bore watching. A big guy like that, clear military background, having been the previous leader? Morgan knew to watch his back. Once they finally breached this bitch of a door, it might be smart to put a bullet in Vincent’s face. Just to make a point.
“Got something to say, Vincent?” Christopher asked.
“Just shut your fucking hole.” Vincent stepped closer. “Your problems with all of this are duly noted. You still don’t think there’s a bunker under this place even now, even while staring at a hidden door at the back of a closet with a motherfucking Fort Knox lock? Fine. Go run off and play with someone else. That’s one less share to split of whatever’s down there.”
Christopher exhaled loudly and stepped back. Vincent turned to Terrence, nodding at Morgan as if urging him to continue.
“So the generator doesn’t look like it’ll kick on now that the main is cut,” Morgan said to Terrence, setting aside the twin problems of Christopher and Vincent for another time. “So that means you did it right.”
“I told you I had it figured out. What, you don’t trust me?”
“You said you couldn’t be sure,” Morgan said. “Fake wires and all.”
“There were a lot of decoys,” Terrence said. “The phone box over there’s a decoy. Same for the Internet. I don’t even think the net here is wired at all, but someone tried to make it look like there’s a fiber line running to it. There were two decoy power lines from the windmill, and that’s on top of the bullshit wire running up to the pole and then just stopping, which flat-out insulted me. But like I said, I got it. There’s a legit line buried up to the windmills on the hill and another to the solar — one on the roof and another to the panel farm in the clearing. Then there’s the one that goes through the wall. Again, some decoys. But I pinched it off with the inverter and battery, Morgan. That generator in there doesn’t realize there’s no power coming in.” He stopped short of adding, Just like I fucking told you ten minutes ago, asshole. Morgan didn’t like that. Nobody called Morgan Matthews an asshole.
“So if the power is out, why isn’t this door open?” He tapped the big, complicated computer lock on the hatch at the back of the broom closet.
“It’s impossible to be sure without going inside, but it could be a few things. They may have a failsafe power supply inside that we can’t see. If I were
designing a system, that’s how I’d have done it: put a self-contained, probably rechargeable short-term power source inside the walls that doesn’t rely on anything outside. So it’s possible they still have power, even with the generator off and the mains cut. Even so, there are still some obvious precautions I’d have taken even if there’s no power down there at all, and they’re knocking around in the dark.”
“Like?”
“A contained power source for the lock itself. A battery inside the mechanism.”
“Can you unplug the battery?”
“Not without getting inside.”
“What else?”
“There’s plain old physical barriers to consider: deadbolts, lock bars — even something jammed behind the door.”
“We can break through that kind of shit,” Morgan said.
“Maybe.” Terrence rapped on the door. “But this? It’s a motherfucker. If we want to get inside, we’re going to need more than a lock pick.”
Morgan eyed his all-purpose electrician, mechanic, and computer hacker. “I assume you’re up to the challenge.”
Terrence crossed his arms and nodded. “I think so, but it’ll be tricky.”
“Tell me what you have in mind,” said Morgan.
So Terrence did.
CHAPTER THREE
At first, Lila couldn’t see a thing.
She took a shallow breath, her heart beating like a tiny, frightened animal. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she wondered if she might be hyperventilating. Another part of her mind wanted to let it happen if she was. Passing out, with lights gone and danger real, might be a blessing.
Panic’s fist gripped her heart and squeezed tight. She was in free fall, maybe trapped, unable to take it.
Seconds ticked, excruciatingly slow, and for the first few moments Lila could barely get from one second to the next.
It’s just a power outage, said her reasonable mind. You’ve spent three months trapped in this tiny box, pretending it isn’t a coffin. But it is, and even if Dad thought to hide the air intakes as well as Piper said he did, those intakes are still the only line you have to fresh breath. You’ve known that all along. What’s happened now is only bringing it front and center.
Relax, Lila.
It’s just fear, with nothing at the root.
You’re in the dark, not dead.
But Lila didn’t believe it.
As she stumbled in the dark, feeling Mom leave her side in an unmotherly (but very Heather-like) way, Lila imagined herself not in the bunker but in empty space. There were portals in the main room where sunlight reflected down from skylights, but none in the bedrooms. Besides, she was pretty sure it was after dark. There had to be some electronic light down here somewhere; her eyes simply hadn’t adjusted.
Or not.
Because as much as Lila’s rational mind had to say about sensible power failures and the safe dark in underground bunkers, a larger part thought she might be telling herself what she wanted to hear.
Piper had told them all: there were redundancies on redundancies.
The power shouldn’t go out.
Thanks to the strange, flickering visions in her dreams, Lila knew what this really was. She knew what was actually happening — and it was more than a simple failure of electricity.
Inside Lila’s mind, she saw the tall man in a long overcoat, his hair black, his nose cruel, his voice tinged with a slight accent, British or maybe Irish. A man whose very movements iced her blood the minute her internal vision displayed him, which it had been doing for weeks.
Lila first thought the man in her mind was a paranoid nightmare: the ominous fellow outside like a boogeyman. It even made sense. She was a silly pregnant teenager. The apocalypse hadn’t changed that. She had too many hormones. Of course she was afraid, and of course she’d created a spook to give her fear something to focus on.
But then she’d seen the man on the cameras, same as in her head.
She’d known this would happen. Even now, she could hear five men’s voices arguing over the best way to seal their doom.
Cut the power.
That won’t open the door, boss.
Just cut it. Do as I say.
Beside Lila, lying back on the bed with pillows stacked against the headboard, Heather had been laughing too hard at a Three’s Company rerun when the power had gone. Laughing if she were stir-crazy — the only reason her mother would laugh so hard at shows she’d seen hundreds of times, from well before she was born. The only reason she’d ignore the presence of the men outside, hip deep in a hole they’d dug against the foundation, twisting wires and readying clippers.
“Mom?” Lila yelled into the darkness, her voice wavering.
“Right here, Lila.”
“Where?” Lila was halfway off the bed. She came the rest of the way and stubbed her toe on something unseen. Her outstretched hands met the closet door before she’d known it was remotely nearby, jamming her wrists and eliciting a cry.
“I’m at the door. Stay on the bed.”
But Lila was forward in a second, grabbing at something that did, in fact, turn out to be her mother.
“Dad has guns,” Lila said. “Where are the guns? Did you find them? Did Piper?”
Heather laughed.
“Where are they, Mom?!”
No answer. Lila could imagine her mother’s insulting look. Then: “Yeah. That sounds like the voice of a person I’d trust with a gun in the dark.”
Propped on the bed, watching Jack Tripper stumble awkwardly through yet another misunderstanding with Mr. Roper, Lila had wanted to say something to her mom about what she felt increasingly certain was happening outside — what she’d seen in her dreams and could feel coming like a mass of cold air. But speaking up would only earn her mockery.
Besides, Lila didn’t need her mother to tell her she was being ridiculous. It was possible she was just jumping at shadows, even as sure as she felt that her vision was true. They’d all been too long underground, and Lila was surely losing her mind like the rest of them. A pregnant girl with too much estrogen. Heather said as much when Lila had pointed out the man in the overcoat on the monitors days ago and called him frightening. Just another New-Age hippie dipshit, Heather had answered. But to Lila, he didn’t look New Age at all.
And Lila knew he had a gun, even though she never saw it on the cameras. The gun’s presence had been whispered in her ear. It had been shown to her in dreams — where she’d seen it point blank, staring straight down its blue steel muzzle.
“Someone cut the power,” Lila said, panting. She felt like she was talking into a box of black velvet. For an insane moment, she was sure her missing mother wouldn’t reply because she’d vanished. Lila was alone, in a featureless void.
“It just went out,” Heather said. “A loose wire or something. It’s been flickering for days.”
“Mom, it’s not just — ”
There was a yell from the other room: either Piper or Raj. Lila wasn’t sure, and not being able to tell was embarrassing. For Raj. He hadn’t been at his manliest lately. The screech came from the right side of the door as she left the bedroom (Lila thought). But she wasn’t sure.
“Heather!” said a voice.
“I’m right here, Piper.”
“Are you and Lila okay?”
“We’re baking cookies. How about you? How’s the family?” Heather replied.
Lila could hear her mother’s feet pacing closer, then away. They exited the bedroom and were now in the bunker’s central room, which they all thought of as the living room. After three months underground, Lila’s ears had attuned to the difference. The larger room held an echo despite the carpet and subtleties of design meant to soften sounds.
Lila still felt lost.
Where had Piper gone? Lila wished she’d reply to her mom’s stupid joke, just so she’d be audible. More words from the responsible one — the person who knew where the guns were and had proved she was willing to pull a trigger if ne
eded.
But Piper said nothing. And still, Lila’s eyes hadn’t adjusted to the dark.
The living room wasn’t much brighter than the bedroom. But at least Lila could see shapes, if she focused. It might only have been thirty seconds since the power had gone out. Since it had been cut by the tall man and his group — at least five other men determined to get inside. Maybe exactly five.
Someone shuffled across the far end of the room. Lila’s keyed-up mind imagined a giant insect trundling by unseen. A shiver ran through her.
“Piper!” Lila yelled.
“Lila?”
But it wasn’t Piper’s voice. Nearby, a shape in the gloom. A male voice: Raj.
Lila wanted to feel comforted or rescued, but she found herself annoyed instead. Raj had never been particularly macho, but bunker living had turned him downright whiny. Right now, he sounded almost pleading. Like he wanted her to rescue him and tell him that everything would be fine rather than the other way around.
Lila’s voice came out sounding annoyed more than frightened. “I’m right here, Raj.”
“Oh, good. I thought you were Trevor.”
“I’m not.”
“Why did the lights go off?”
Lila’s fear slid further into irritation — a welcome change. “How the hell should I know?”
The room strobed in a series of bright flashes. Lila’s breath caught, her instinctive mind interpreting the flashes as an attack. Then she realized the silent flares were the flickering of emergency lights. There was one in each room, mounted near the ceiling. Their glow was bright white, unidirectional, harsh. Glare from the living room light cast everything into sharp-edged shadows and brightly flooded facets of light. The contrast was garish, but better than the dark.
“Thank God,” Piper said.
Lila looked over and saw her stepmother on the couch’s other side, near Trevor. She was happier to see Piper than she felt comfortable realizing. It was as if she expected Piper to save them all — or thought her dead, and a ghost in the dark.
But she was there: real, corporeal, welcome. Piper was the only reluctant killer among them. The only one who’d proved she had what it took to defend the castle now that the man of the house had gone missing.
