by E S Richards
“He’s fine,” Mia smiled, shaking Chesney’s hand happily. “My family are fine; they’re all back home. Chase and Riley, with my mother and,” Mia had to stop herself, remembering her father’s absence like a knife to the heart.
Chesney seemed to notice her faltering and nodded softly. “We’ve had some losses here too. It’s not been easy.”
Mia smiled a wry smile, finding it funny how much of an understatement that was. Her heart was hammering away in her chest it almost echoed through her eardrums, the adrenaline of being held at gunpoint and then finding a friend coursing through her veins like a river. She had so many questions for Chesney and by the look on his face she could see he had many for her as well. The first was the most pressing though: who else was inside and how had they managed to survive for this long? If they could do it, Mia had hope for her family back home as well.
Within the space of only ten minutes, that hope had magnified almost into total belief. Following Chesney, Mia was led down some old stone stairs that were hidden by a trapdoor in the garage to a small room underneath the house. From there she watched as Chesney pressed in on a certain section of stone wall, revealing a hidden door that would’ve otherwise gone unnoticed. The tall man held it open for her, allowing Mia to walk through and discover the incredible labyrinth of rooms hidden underground. It was incredible. People turned and looked at her as she stood gormlessly in the doorway, utterly staggered by the sight of ten or twelve people all living comfortably in a large, open-plan underground home.
“What the…” Mia trailed off, glancing in all directions as she took the sight in. “How?”
“Chesney?” A woman who had been sat with a young boy of perhaps seven or eight stood up and walked toward Mia and Chesney, a look of confusion and uncertainty on her face. “What are you doing?”
“It’s okay love,” Chesney spoke up from beside Mia, shaking his head at the approaching woman. “This is Mia Clarke – she was Brogan’s sister. You remember Chase and Riley’s parents? The ones who died in that horrible accident?”
Mia winced as her family’s deaths were spoken of so casually. No matter how many other people she had seen or heard of dying since Yellowstone erupted, it still didn’t make it any easier remembering the way she lost her brother and his wife. The Clarke family had been ripped in half that day and despite all their best efforts, it had never been the same since.
“Yes? Oh, I know –”
“Chase? Did someone say Chase?”
The woman’s response was cut short by a teenage boy interrupting her, a sixteen-year-old that Mia immediately recognized as Evan due to her picturing the dirt rally the boys had orchestrated almost half of her walk over to the hamlet. He looked at Mia expectantly, craning his neck to see if anyone stood behind her.
“Chase is fine,” Mia smiled, “he’s back at our farmhouse with my mother and Riley. I,” she paused and looked around the underground chamber again, marveling at how the walls were carved out of the ground so perfectly and yet held their own without looking like they might buckle and break at any moment. The huge room was carved entirely out of the earth and as a result remained fairly warm; a fire burned against one wall, providing even more heat that several people gathered around.
“This place is incredible,” she continued in awe. “How did you build it?”
“It was already here,” Chesney replied with a smile from beside her. “Come on, let’s go sit by the fire and we can catch up. I don’t know if you remember by wife, Kimi?” Chesney asked as he led Mia further into the room and the woman who had stood up to question her arrival started to walk with them.
“I’m sorry about that,” Kimi replied, her expression and tone considerably softer than before. “We’ve not seen anyone from the outside world in weeks.”
“It’s okay,” Mia replied, knowing she would have done exactly the same thing if someone walked into her home unannounced. “Don’t worry about it. How long have you all been down here?”
“Since the volcano went off,” Kimi explained. “This bunker has always been down here; it connects all of our houses together. There were more of us at first, but a few decided they didn’t want to stay behind.”
“What do you mean?”
“As soon as we caught wind of what had happened and how it was going to affect us, we grabbed as much as we could from upstairs and brought it down.” Kimi continued to talk while Chesney offered Mia a warm mug of coffee, which she accepted graciously and wrapped her hands around to keep her body warm. “At first people were going up and down between here and their houses; there are entrances from each of them,” she added, “not just from our place.”
Mia nodded along, learning about how the families from the hamlet had all banded together in what was already a very close-knit community and come to a unanimous group decision about what to do. Despite their homes just above them, they had all agreed it was safest to live underground, only going up for necessary supplies when they absolutely had to.
The hamlet was made up of five houses, with families living in each of them. After looking around the underground room, Mia could only make out the members of three separate groups. Asking Kimi and Chesney what had happened to the others.
“Not everyone agreed it was safe to stay underground,” Chesney answered as Kimi rolled her eyes, clearly disagreeing with what had transpired beforehand. “Janet and Andy took their kids and high-tailed out of here within a couple of days, heading south for the border and aiming to get into Mexico.”
“They thought they could outrun the cloud and that it wouldn’t be as bad further south,” Chesney chimed in. “I doubt they will have made it.”
“Things are worse than you think out there,” Mia nodded, remembering the run-in’s she’d had. “There’s a group calling themselves The Authority that have set up a base in Houston; they’re rounding up children and segregating them from the adults. Chase and Riley got caught up in it for a while, but now there’s a revolution happening there that I think could become very dangerous.”
“A revolution?” Evan questioned, the teenager having sat quietly beside his parents while Mia spoke, listening to the story and gathering information about what was happening. “What happened?”
Mia had almost forgotten the kid was there, a look at his face reminding her of the purpose of her visit. “I don’t know what’s going to happen exactly,” she shrugged, “but this eruption has changed things more than I could’ve imagined. It’s not just the effects of the ash cloud that we need to consider anymore, but how the population has changed as well. This group in Houston; I’m scared they’re going to come back even stronger and start spreading their reach outside of the city. I need to make sure my family is protected; I need to keep them safe.”
“You should bring them here. We have the space.”
Mia looked at Chesney with a surprised gaze, trying to figure out if he was being entirely serious or not.
“Chesney is right,” Kimi added with a nod. “There’s plenty of room and this has got to be the safest place for miles. We’ve got enough supplies to last for months – RJ and Alex over there are hoarders,” she nodded to a couple watching quietly from another corner. “They had enough stuff to keep us all going on their own.”
The couple smiled and waved awkwardly, the conversation carrying throughout the bunker and befalling everyone’s ears. Mia couldn’t believe the offer; it was more than she could’ve dreamed of, but was it really possible? Could she really bring her family here?
“It’s true,” Evan agreed. “You should bring Chase here. There’s loads of space, but he can share my den anyway.”
Mia smiled, reminding herself how much Chase seemed to have matured compared to his friend Evan since the eruption. Chase had undoubtedly been through a lot more and it had forced him to grow up, but if she could give him the opportunity to be a child again, that was something she was incredibly keen to give to him.
“How did you get here?” Chesney asked, n
ot for a second acting or speaking like the offer to move into the underground bunker with them wasn’t real. “I’ll help you get back to them if you’d like.”
“I walked,” Mia replied on auto-pilot, still not convinced over what was happening. “But – are you sure about this? Are you being serious?”
“Of course,” Chesney confirmed, Kimi and Evan both nodding much like everyone else around the room who Mia caught from the corner of her eye. “We’ve got to stick together in these times. Bring your family here, Mia. Give them a real chance to survive.”
Mia didn’t know what to say. Of all the people she had encountered, very few had been so instantly and immensely unselfish and kind. She had almost given up hope on humanity, believing that no one did anything anymore unless they had an ulterior or a secondary motive. But Chesney, Kimi and Evan – along with the others in the bunker – had proved her wrong quicker than she could even say it. They were giving her family a chance to live and live with ease; they were giving them a life.
“Thank you,” she whispered, overwhelmed by the sentiment and almost lost for words. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” Chesney grinned, “it’ll be good for Evan to have someone else to talk to; keep him off our backs for a bit.”
Mia chuckled, a sensation that felt almost alien to her. There hadn’t been much time for laughter in her life recently, one bad moment leading very swiftly onto the next. Her brain almost couldn’t comprehend that it was about to come to an end, words itching at the back of her head and telling her that it was too good to be true. Could this be real? A large part of her wanted to buy into it, but there was no way she was going to fall head first into the fantasy. She had learned enough by now to know never to trust completely; the underground bunker was a nice idea, but until she was there with her family beside it, that was all it was going to be.
“So you walked?” Chesney continued, raising his eyebrows. “That must’ve been quite a trip.”
“Yeah,” Mia nodded, refusing to be negative despite the voice in her head. “It took me a couple of hours maybe. We don’t have a working vehicle anymore.”
A smile crept onto Chesney’s face again, looking over at his son rather mischievously. “I think you’re going to like this then,” he smirked, winking at Evan who jumped to his feet and ran off to the door that Mia had entered though.
“What?”
“You’ll see,” Chesney replied. “We’ll have you back to your family in less than half of that time.”
The man wasn’t lying. Ten minutes later, Mia was racing across the snow on modified quadbikes, their tires covered with snow-tread to keep them from slipping and sliding on the ice. She rode one, while Chesney and Evan flanked her on either side, the three of them zooming back to her parents’ farmhouse faster than she’d traveled for some time. Evan had insisted on coming with them to see Chase, the boy practically giddy at the thought of his friend seeing him turn up on one of the very same bikes they’d used for their dirt rally all those years ago.
In fairness, Mia was almost giddy as well. She kept waiting for the opportunity to fall apart but it didn’t seem to be happening. Instead things only became more and more real: her family was being given a second chance and the four of them were going to make it through this.
“I don’t think I can leave him, Mia. I don’t think I can do it.”
The voice in the back of Mia’s head screamed, tormenting her with the knowledge that everything had been too good to be true. She looked at her mother and held both of her hands, desperately trying to change the old woman’s mind. When she, Chesney and Evan had returned to the old farmhouse there had been a long period of elation; watching Chase and his friend embrace had brought tears to Mia’s eyes, her heart melting as she saw the boy smile again. But now she found herself faced with her mother, wondering if they would be able to leave at all.
“I know it’s hard mom,” she reasoned with Linda. “But think about what dad would have wanted. I know you don’t want to leave him behind, but we can’t pass up on this opportunity. We have a chance to really survive now, to make it to the very end. That’s what dad would’ve wanted us to do, that’s what he would’ve wanted you to do.”
Linda looked at her daughter and paused for a moment, thinking about Jerry. He was the only man she had ever loved. He had been her everything, the first thing on her mind every morning and the last word to grace her lips at night. Losing him had been more painful than anything she could’ve ever dreamed of, but as she looked at her daughter – her only remaining child – Linda knew that Mia was right. As much as she didn’t want to leave the place where her husband was buried, she had to do so in order to keep the rest of her family from suffering the same fate.
“Okay,” she nodded. “Okay, I’ll go.”
Mia wrapped her arms around her mother and held her tightly. If Linda had refused to come, then she knew the rest of them would’ve stayed behind as well. They were a family and Mia was determined to keep them that way for as long as possible from now on. Being together was the most important thing to her; though she couldn’t deny she was much happier to be together in a secure underground bunker, than in an old, dilapidated farmhouse.
“Thank you, mom,” she smiled, kissing her mother’s forehead. “Thank you.”
“I love you sweetheart, and I’m so proud of everything that you’ve done. Your father was too. He loved you very much.”
“I know, mom.”
“Let’s get those kids out of here, shall we? Let’s get this family somewhere safe.”
The strength and resilience of her mother, was something that Mia knew she would never forget. She saw how hard it was for Linda to say goodbye to the old farmhouse, leaving with the knowledge that she might never return to the house she’d lived in almost her entire life.
But when they walked back into the underground bunker and Mia saw her mother’s face light up, she knew they had all made the right decisions and that everything had been worth it. Chase stood with his friend and talked and joked like they were back at school again, forgetting the terrors he had seen and the horrors he had witnessed and just being a sixteen-year-old boy again. Riley and Linda walked over to the fireplace and warmed their hands, speaking softly to Alex, RJ and their children – one of them a girl only a year or two older than Riley.
Mia didn’t know what to do with herself. For the first time in a long time, she wasn’t running from anything or trying to reach someone. She wasn’t desperate or yearning, or frightened or in pain. She couldn’t say what was going to happen in the following weeks, months or years; but she knew that her family had more of a chance of seeing the world return to normal now than they ever had done before.
Luck was finally on their side and it was a feeling that Mia embraced with open arms.
Want More Awesome Books?
Find more fantastic tales right here.
If you’re new to reading Mike Kraus, consider visiting his website and signing up for his free newsletter. You’ll receive several free books and a sample of his audiobooks, too, just for signing up, you can unsubscribe at any time and you will receive absolutely no spam.
