by Sean Platt
Maybe it wasn’t a pantry. Maybe it was a giant linen closet. Heather was deep into contemplating the ramifications of this interesting possibility when she looked up to see the blond man — Remy — attempting to wrench the screwdriver out of the jamb.
“Oh, is that what the problem is, keeping the door closed?” Heather said. “Thank God. I’ve been puzzling it out all day.”
Remy didn’t even look at her. This was disappointing. Usually, Remy offered the best audience of the three. She’d known Garth before he’d become a big bad asshole — just a bit, but enough that he seemed embarrassed to face her. The kid, Wade, scared her. But Remy? He was out of his element. He looked like a copier salesman who’d been laid off, let his hair and beard grow out, then decided it was finally time to start living life as a sad sack of shit. In Heather’s opinion, he was doing it perfectly.
“So I guess you found me a TV? The service in this place is terrible.”
Remy kept wrenching at the screwdriver, too focused and sweaty to reply.
“And the bellhops are sloppy as shit.”
Remy’s eyes flicked toward Heather for a second. Then he resumed jimmying. Finally, the screwdriver broke out of the wood. His momentum, when it popped out, nearly threw him to the floor.
Heather was about to make another witty rejoinder when Remy moved to work on the second screwdriver but a voice stopped her: Wade, just out of sight.
“Kick it.”
Remy had the screwdriver in his hand, working it as he’d worked the other, stuck farther in and barely budging. His dark-blond hair swung in his face.
“Kick it. Come on, shit.”
Remy kept working.
“Jesus Christ,” said Wade, now stepping into view. Heather saw something that almost stopped her cynical heart. Trevor, with a gun to his side.
“Like this, idiot.” Wade kicked at the screwdriver, but it didn’t budge any more than it had for Remy. His hard eyes glanced at his companion to see if he’d have something to say about that, but then moved closer and stomped hard on the thing. It bent with a crack.
“Okay,” said Remy, moving in to get it the rest of the way.
Wade stomped again, mashing Remy’s fingers.
“I said, I got it!” Remy shouted.
“Come on.” Wade looked over his shoulder at something Heather couldn’t see. “I don’t trust this fucker.”
The screwdriver came free, and the door sighed an inch outward, the latch seemingly jammed or shattered. Heather’s first impulse was to rush forward, bang into the door, throw it into Wade, and wrestle her son away from him. But they were already moving to open the door and shove Trevor inside — a good thing, since her move would’ve seen them both killed.
Heather wrapped her arms around Trevor. He was almost as tall as she was. She was pulling his head to her chest when something came behind him. She looked up expecting to see one of the bandits, but instead saw Meyer stumbling in with an Indian kid she didn’t know.
“Meyer?”
His answer was perfectly Meyer Dempsey. He was bleeding from the lip, had a swollen cheek, and looked like his right eye was half-closed, the entire side of his face crimson with scratches. But he just said, “Hey, Heather.” As if they’d run into each other at Starbucks.
She wrapped her arms around him anyway, shameless and unguarded. They made a tiny huddle: mother and father and son, safe and together for at least this moment.
Hammering noises came from the doorway. They were putting the screwdrivers back, the unimaginative bastards. Only this time Remy had a bunch of fat nails in his teeth as well, each pitch black and thick as a nightcrawler. Was the bunker the only place in the house that could be locked?
Four prisoners, now. Heather and Meyer and Trevor and …
“Who are you?” she asked.
Her tone must have been caustic enough to cut through the kid’s fear. The Indian put a hand on his hip and said, “Who are you?”
“Heather, this is Raj.” Meyer winced at the syllables. He looked up, watching Remy depart, then finished, “Lila’s boyfriend.”
Heather cocked her head, a rejoinder ready on her lips. You didn’t date the infamous Heather Hawthorne’s daughter without bracing for a stage show of shit.
“Raj, this is Heather. Lila’s mother.”
Raj extended his hand. It looked for a moment like he actually wanted to hug her in greeting — as if she might enjoy meeting the kid who was sticking his dick in her daughter — but he shifted to an offered handshake before making an ass of himself. Heather looked at the hand, then filled it with a box of crackers.
“Have something to eat, Raj. You’re too skinny.”
Seemingly unsure of what to say, the kid complied. Heather proceeded to ignore him and turned to her boys.
“How’d you get stuck with lamb curry?” she asked, nodding toward Raj. “Is Lila safe?”
Meyer looked toward the closet door, then turned Heather around before saying, very low, “She and Piper came with the three of us. But they stayed outside. They’ll be fine.”
“‘Fine,’ as in, ‘they’ll call the cops and come back to save us?’”
“I don’t think the cops are going to be very responsive right now.”
Heather sighed. She knew that, of course, but it was annoying that Meyer treated her remark as serious.
“Well,” Heather said, “it’s nice of you to stop by for a visit.” She held Trevor out at arm’s length, unable to repress the need to be an assessing mother even now. He seemed okay, as Lila was hopefully okay. Piper? Meh. Heather liked Piper fine, but she was also the new wife and could stay or go.
“How many of them are there?” said Meyer.
“Three. Unless the others are having a party, but are too shy to say hi.”
Trevor shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Meyer said.
“Sorry for what, Trev?”
“It’s nothing,” said Meyer.
“I wasn’t asking you.”
“I told Dad there were only two guys. If I’d seen the third …” He looked for a moment like he might start to cry. Heather wasn’t sure what bothered her more: that he felt responsible or that crying, at fifteen, would embarrass the shit out of him later. Either way, Heather pulled him back into a hug.
He was safe. Meyer was safe. Even Lila was safe.
Their situation could be better, but Heather had more or less resigned herself to the possibility that they’d all been killed — or at the least, waylaid and not coming. Having her ex-husband and son here, even wedged into a pantry, was strangely comforting. Apparently, misery loved company, and Heather had made a living out of being miserable. She was practiced, and almost at ease.
“What are they going to do with us, Mom?” said Trevor.
“Yeah, what have you heard?” the Indian kid added. Raj. Who was surely fucking her baby girl.
“I don’t know, kid.” She looked at Meyer, ignoring Raj. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but why the hell are you here?”
“I told you we were coming here. I told you to meet us here before the …” Meyer trailed off, apparently unwilling to add a forthcoming alien apocalypse to their current list of concerns. “I saw your car and their trucks. I wasn’t just going to run away. I screwed it up, I know. But … fucking Garth. Can you believe that asshole?”
“I mean here. In this closet.”
“Oh. Well …”
“They threw us in here,” said Raj.
Heather stared at Raj for a long moment. Then she said, “We’re going to discuss our situation over here. Go do some math.”
“They caught us in the kitchen. We didn’t have any weapons, but I thought if we could get into the bunker, I could get some. But the bald guy was in the bathroom —” He rushed on, not looking at Trevor, who didn’t seem to have forgiven himself. “— and he stopped me before I could unlock it.”
“Darling ex-husband of mine,” said Heather, her voice saccharin. �
��Former love of my life.”
“Yes?”
“I hate the need to be so specific and crass.”
“When have you ever hated that?”
“But what I’m asking is, why didn’t they kill you? Or chop off your hand and use it to open the door. Or …” She looked at Trevor, remembering the way Wade had been holding him as a bargaining chip. She didn’t want to say what she’d had in mind, but Meyer got the message just fine: … or threaten Trevor until you did what they wanted?
“I told them there was a time delay.”
“What does that mean?”
“I told Garth the door was on a timer. Like the safe in a convenience store.”
Heather looked at Raj.
“It’s a safety precaution,” Meyer went on.
“So … wait … why would you put a time delay on something like that? What if you really needed to get in right away?”
“I didn’t. I wouldn’t. That would be idiotic.”
“But Garth believed it.”
Meyer nodded. “They …” He trailed off, eyeing Trevor, and Heather wondered if they’d threatened her son after all. “They kind of forced me to open it. Those two other guys. After they reported to Garth, who seems to be in charge. Which is amusing, seeing as he was barely in charge when he was just a foreman. You know — the kind of construction foreman who doesn’t kidnap you?”
“He did manage to build you an apocalypse bunker.”
“Garth thought … forcing me to open it was a grand idea.” Again he looked guiltily toward Trevor. “So I did the whole routine. Scanned my hand. But then I entered the panic code instead of the one that opens the door.”
“So it’ll call the cops after all.”
“It would if the cell networks worked. Which they don’t.”
“Oh.”
“But it lit up the right lights. They seemed convinced.”
“Are you sure they believed you?”
Meyer looked at Trevor and Raj as if to say, Well, they’re still alive.
“While I was in there pushing buttons for show, I changed the clock.”
Heather shrugged.
“It has a countdown timer.”
Heather shrugged again, wishing he’d get to the fucking point.
“A countdown timer,” he elaborated, “that shows when the lock can be opened.”
Heather nodded. She could picture it: a lock of the type the workmen had never seen before, installed by one of Meyer’s high-tech specialists. A ticking clock on the lock’s face, counting down to zero.
“How long until it runs out?”
Heather looked through the open mesh at the pantry’s end, through the room beyond, and at the sky outside, where the sun had finally slipped below the horizon at the end of a very long day. The last day, if projections about the alien ships hadn’t changed during her amateur incarceration, that humanity would spend alone.
“Eight hours,” Meyer answered.
Heather looked around at each of them, then at the door with its new nails. “Well, what do you want to do until then?”
Meyer’s eyes became steely. He was looking outside too, possibly wondering when people would be able to look up and see the ships without an app or a telescope. Wondering what might happen then, and if eight hours of waiting would give anyone time to run and hide.
“Figure out what to do when that timer hits zero,” he said. “Before they realize I tricked them, and decide to come in here and start killing until I do it right.”
DAY SIX
CHAPTER 35
Day Six, Early Morning
Axis Mundi
The night was long and dark.
It had been nearly eight hours by the time Meyer finished his debate with Garth, doing his best to twist the man into a conversational pretzel. He’d acted irate — easy, because he was. He’d acted betrayed, which he also was — and which, surprisingly, he’d decided might be an effective lever against a man with blue-collar values and what he thought might be a Christian upbringing. And about that, he was right: Garth didn’t shout when Meyer said he’d taken what rightfully belonged to the Dempsey family. Instead, he’d gone on the defensive — the move of a man trying to establish himself as right, rather than arguing why it was okay for him to do wrong.
But that was just filibustering, and Meyer had known it from the start. He was buying time, unsure what to do with it post-purchase. In truth, he had no idea how to handle the situation. There was really only one way to solve it — to let Garth and his crew into the bunker. The stubborn part of Meyer — the one that always had to win, and never surrender, because giving up was for cowards — wanted to resist just for the sake of resistance. But there was another, more practical reason to keep trying.
Garth knew that there was plenty about the bunker that he himself didn’t know, because Meyer — like any smart man who wishes to keep a secret — had the lair constructed in pieces by discreet firms. One handled wiring for the lower level only; another handled network and computers; another handled rooms that Garth’s crew only saw through caution tape. Only Meyer knew all of its tricks … and Garth, unless he was an idiot, knew that Meyer was the kind of man who liked tricks plenty. He’d have back doors. He’d have failsafes. It was all true. If Garth and the boys went into the lair, Meyer would know how to get them back out.
And of course, Garth knew that. Which meant that Garth, as much as it would pain his relatively moderate personality to act, couldn’t afford to let Meyer or his family live. It didn’t even matter that Garth wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger himself. Wade would do it with relish.
Meyer sat in the dark while Trevor snoozed with his head on his mother’s chest, Heather’s abrasive mouth finally silent.
Eight hours.
He’d set the timer at around 8 p.m. That meant that at some time around 4 a.m., it would reach zero. It wouldn’t ring or buzz, but it seemed too much to hope the invaders would just sleep until morning and give him extra hours to think. No, they’d be watching it. They’d know they could sleep in the bunker. And truth be told, Meyer thought that none of the three men truly believed the time delay thing. They just knew that they could wait eight hours with impunity. Last Meyer had heard, the current projections said the ships wouldn’t arrive until around noon, maybe later.
He sat cross-legged on the floor, watching the moon as it appeared between distant peaks. The moon was just a big rock in space. The Earth was just a big rock in space. Of course they weren’t alone. They’d never been alone. They’d just been more anonymous life on the one planet in the solar system lucky enough to have a magnetic field to deflect the solar wind. It was luck, nothing more. Humanity wasn’t special, and they were about to learn it.
Meyer thought of the bunker, trying to fight the growing certainty that they’d never get inside, and that something terrible would happen if they did.
He closed his eyes, keeping his spine tall, rigid enough that his tired mind wouldn’t be tempted to sleep. If he started to nod off, he’d slouch, and that would wake him.
But he didn’t think he’d sleep. Meyer’s mind — his higher mind, not the lump of gray clay inside his skull — knew what he was doing, and what he was trying to access.
He breathed slowly. Tried to muffle the outside world. Tried to imagine the home’s quiet as being the silence of somewhere else, far away. Outer space, perhaps. Or maybe not. He’d visited a place very like outer space again and again, when his individual mind found the universal mind, when he seemed to see the world from above (not literally, but conceptually), when he felt like he could see through all the things that others took for granted: the permanence of objects, the rigid and always forward-marching nature of time, the artificial divisions between this and that.
Meyer wasn’t a party guy, not one to rely on substances. He’d smoked pot; he’d drunk; he’d smoked. A few years ago — right around the time he’d grown serious about his nutrition, his body, and whatever energy lay beyond it — he’d
quit all three. Now the only thing he ever took into his system was what Juha prepared for him, and for Heather if she joined the ceremony with him. It wasn’t a drug: it was medicine. To Meyer, ayahuasca felt more like a lens. Or a doorway.
He sat for ten minutes, trying to access that feeling of ascension and seeing beyond. But it was no use. It had been too long. The effects always stayed with him after the ceremony ended, leading to a long-tail high that lasted for weeks, sometimes months. The medicine was Windex on a windshield. Eventually, life’s muck would cloud that view, and it would need another cleaning — but for a while, Meyer could finally see everything clearly, like stars outside of the city.
But not now. The lens was too dirty. He knew the ships were coming, same as everyone else. He knew there was more to the story, but could no longer remember what it was. He knew there were connections. There was universal knowledge, accessible only to his higher mind — the higher mind, he often thought, that belonged to everyone and everything. But right now he was only a man, in a body, trapped in a pantry.
He looked at the wall clock beyond the door. It was after midnight. Less than four hours to go.
They couldn’t ram the door. Even without the new nails, it would take several hits — plenty of time for the men to hear and come running. They couldn’t open the door in stealth; the hinges and screwdrivers were on the outside, and the mesh was too small to reach through. There was no one to help them. Piper and Lila would try to find a cavalry, no matter what he’d told them, but there was no one to help. The closest neighbors were miles away; the streets were empty; anyone who could help, given their own surely pressing concerns, never would. Lila and Piper were on their own, and that meant that Meyer, Heather, Trevor, and Raj were, too.
He had no idea how to escape.
No idea how to get into the bunker.
No idea how to do anything but wait for time to expire.
And then, all of a sudden, he did.
