by Sean Platt
But on the other hand, Garth had that mustache.
Ultimately, the decision about whether Garth was a solid employee or a fucker was decided when he’d grabbed her wrist that first night, made her scream, then shouted for the two buddies he’d brought with him. Into the pantry she’d gone. And now the only thing keeping them from gagging her was the effort of removing the screwdrivers holding her in.
Heather wondered if she should pace her cell, bounce a rubber ball off the walls, do pull-ups and push-ups, or wistfully play the harmonica.
But ultimately, she decided most of the time to stay mute (against her instincts; it wasn’t easy) and to sit on the floor, pretending she didn’t exist. They’d tossed her a few boxes of crackers yesterday, and it would be a while before she’d have to ask for more. For now, if she lay low, maybe they’d let her be.
Then she could bide her time and wait for Meyer.
Heather really had no doubt that he would, indeed, arrive. The man was relentless. She’d joked about Meyer onstage too, but with decidedly more unspoken affection. His will (like his cock) was a battering ram. He’d be here. Somehow, he’d be here, and get her out.
A small, hidden part of Heather wondered at that, though, and the larger, louder Heather spent every moment trying to crush her quiet doubts.
In truth, she didn’t feel quite as obnoxious and brash as she sounded.
In truth, she was a little afraid of Garth, Remy, and that fucking wildcard kid Wade. Wade was as crazy as Heather pretended to be, but she was pretty sure his craziness was greased by speed and PCP. He had an idiot’s mania and, despite his wiry frame, the strength of a person who literally has no idea how hard he can hit. He’d already buckled a joist after Garth had yelled at him. And, probably, broken every bone in his arm and hand.
In truth, Heather wondered if Meyer really was coming, despite what she kept telling herself. He was strong and smart, bullheaded. Behind the sarcasm, she loved him very much. But she’d seen Vegas burn, and she’d heard enough panic on the increasingly intermittent news to know that anything could happen out there. He might have been shot and killed, as she nearly had been. Or ripped off and stranded, unable to reach his destination in time.
And the kids?
Heather suppressed a shudder, then doubled the effort to force reality away and reinforce her sarcastic wall. She wouldn’t even consider what might have happened to … to whatever it was that she’d already forgotten to think about.
Outside the pantry, Remy (pathetic- and confused-looking, light-blue eyes, around her own age) was eating a snack-size bag of Cheetos. Predictably, crumbs were lodging in his sad little mustache. He brushed at the thing, but a rather large chunk remained.
“I see you’re saving some for later,” Heather observed.
Remy trained his pale-blue eyes on her, gripped the gun butt at his side, and said nothing.
CHAPTER 31
Day Five, Evening
Axis Mundi
Kicking the door in and charging whoever had occupied the ranch — as Trevor and Raj had suggested — would have been a terrible idea. Chances were good that someone would get shot. But they shouldn’t make it easy.
Meyer rolled the thought in his calculating mind, weighing it, trying to decide if he could live with the odds. Given the near-certainty of getting shot, he didn’t want Piper or Lila putting themselves at risk. Yes, it was sexist. Meyer didn’t care. It would also keep them out of the way, and safe from the bullets.
If they listened to his instructions, they wouldn’t even approach the house. They’d stay at the tree line, and if Meyer, Raj, and Trevor failed, the bandits would never know they were there. Plan B was for the men to fall on the blade (metaphorically, Meyer hoped) and for the girls to go somewhere else — anywhere that seemed to offer unconventional shelter rather than predictable homes and barns. And if the men in the house killed them and came after Lila and Piper, they had a plan for that, too. They were on horseback, and trucks couldn’t fit between the trees. So if the bandits gave chase, they needed only to take the wooded path.
Meyer was crouched behind the first truck. Raj was behind the other. Trevor was in the least responsible and safest position, present only because Meyer had encouraged him to stand up for himself in the past and denying him now felt hypocritical. Besides, they needed a lookout — someone on the other side of the house looking through windows, able to shout locations if they swarmed at Meyer and Raj. Sure, it was cowardly. But it was also insulting to tell the women they shouldn’t fight, and right now social rules didn’t matter much to Meyer. All that mattered was winning his Axis Mundi back — and if he had to be an asshole and fight dirty, so be it.
Life wasn’t like the movies — not even quality movies made by his studio. In non-close-quarters gunfights, people tended to aim poorly and rarely got shot. But things changed when one party wasn’t willing to back off, determined to keep coming no matter what. Meyer wasn’t willing to come so far only to turn away. He’d keep coming, and someone might be killed. He was okay with it being him if that meant victory, and truth be told he was mostly okay with it being Raj. If that made him a bastard, oh well.
Right now, his family was all that mattered.
Meyer had learned a thing or two about gunfights as he’d trained for history’s inevitable shift. But he didn’t need training to know that gunfights were harder and a lot more dangerous when you didn’t have any guns.
Raj looked over. Meyer motioned for him to wait.
Maybe it was stupid to even try and get in, past the men with shotguns.
Probably it was stupid.
But even though they’d lost their weapons with the Land Cruiser, they had to try. Meyer knew it. He knew it in the way he’d seen this all coming.
When the ships arrived, they needed to be here, in Vail, inside this bunker. It was all over if they weren’t. Piper and Lila might be able to survive out there somewhere if this all went south, but even that scared him. He had to get them all safe, including Heather, who was probably inside, having apparently rolled out of the Vegas fat and into the Vail fire.
Get inside or die.
Or: Die trying to get inside.
Raj was pointing at the truck in front of him. He was behind the tailgate, but gesturing toward the cab. Meyer watched him mouth, Gun.
Meyer shrugged.
Gun in truck? Then a shrug, as if asking a question.
He was saying there might be weapons in the trucks. Meyer doubted it. Only a stupid criminal would invade a home, then leave firearms outside for the cops to use on arrival. Only, this wasn’t the usual home invasion, and the police wouldn’t be coming. It was a mystery how anyone had even found the place. In the end, only two things mattered.
Heather might need help.
And they had to get inside.
Both problems pointed to one solution: they had to reach the bunker, below the house.
The invaders wouldn’t even know it was there. Its entrance, like that of any respectable panic room, was concealed behind the back of a mop closet off the kitchen. You slid aside a panel, you entered a code, and then the back of the closet would swing forward like a secret passage in an old haunted mansion. Behind that wall was a tiny space, too small to be noticed from the outside by all but the most observant architect. A tight spiral staircase wound downward, set in concrete. You could retract both stairs and central spindle to lower supplies down on a dumbwaiter, but the largest items were added before the construction crew had laid the steel and concrete floor to seal it in. Tough cookies if they wanted a new couch for the apocalypse.
But there were guns in the bunker. Plenty. If they could get downstairs quietly, they could arm up. Then they could come up blazing. Meyer could even handle that bit of unpleasantness himself. He had body armor and riot helmets. He’d even spent a fortune on an Uzi, thus ensuring aim as an afterthought.
Then they could find Heather.
Then they could head out, give the all-clear to Lila and
Piper, and bring them inside.
Get to the kitchen. Get into the bunker. Get armed, then get lethal. The plan was reliant on stealth. Their current lack of weapons barely mattered.
Raj was still looking at Meyer, waiting for an answer.
Meyer shrugged as if to say, What the hell.
Raj, staying low, crept forward. He peeked into the cab, then eased the door open and stuck his torso inside, making himself a rather obvious target. Meyer held his breath, knowing he couldn’t shout at Raj to stop. Finally he came out and showed his empty hands.
Of course.
Movement caught Meyer’s eye, now around the side of the garage. Trevor held up two fingers, the index and middle. He touched the index and mouthed, Living room, then touched the middle and silently added, Dining room.
Meyer nodded.
Trevor seemed to be saying more. He was pantomiming, touching fingers, making gestures. Then he bent into a squat as if preparing to take a shit right there outside the garage. Like a cat expressing its distaste of the general situation.
Meyer scrunched his eyebrows: What?
Trevor squatted. Touched both raised fingers at once.
Meyer shook his head. He looked at Raj, who shrugged.
Trevor ducked low, looked both ways like a child crossing the street, and ran to stoop behind his father. Meyer didn’t even have time to raise his hands to tell him not to. The kid was slightly reckless.
But no gunfire erupted. Trevor was breathing hard, flushed, but admirably coherent. Like a cocky teenager who thinks he’s going to live forever.
“I told you to stay put,” Meyer said, his voice half hiss, angry and scared at once.
“I told you. They’re not on this side. Living room and dining room.”
“There could be more.”
Trevor shook his head. “I looked everywhere. In every window, including both ends. It’s not like I needed to check upstairs or downstairs.”
Meyer looked at the house. It was large and sprawling, but only one story. Given the price and isolation, anyone else would probably have stacked another floor on the place, but Meyer hadn’t wanted a vacation home. He’d wanted a shelter, and that meant that the most important parts had been safely concealed below ground months ago.
“Still stupid, Trevor.” But he patted his son on the back, pleased despite the boy being foolhardy. “What was with the squatting?”
“Oh. They’re sitting down. One is watching TV. The TV’s still working. Can you believe it?”
Meyer could. As long as TV existed, the ranch would get it. It ran on a generator with several large, underground fuel tanks when it wasn’t collecting solar from the roof, and a surprising amount of wind power from two huge turbines a mile higher up the hill. The signal came from a satellite, same as the Internet. Meyer had already considered connecting his phone to the wireless, hoping for an update before they charged to their possible deaths, but he didn’t remember the password by heart and would need to get into the office to find it.
“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. 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 for 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 32
Day Five, Evening
Axis Mundi
Trevor looked back at his sister, mounted 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.
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.
His father would almost certainly insist on doing that part alone. Trevor wondered if relief at the thought made him a coward.
They reached the porch off the kitchen. It was at the home’s end, wrapping around from the rear to the expansive front, where deck chairs overlooked 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.
