by S.A. Bodeen
Dad scrunched up his forehead. “Mmm, noooo. Things are slowly coming back out there. Of course most of the satellites would still have to be intact. I’m thinking a government somewhere, maybe ours, spread wireless Internet like a blanket, so survivors could be in contact with one another. Remember that place we went to in Colorado, on our skiing vacation?”
I nodded. “Yeah. They had free wireless all over town.”
He laid his hands out toward me, like he was giving me a gift. “There you go, just like that.”
It seemed so simple. Too simple. “So what else have you found out?”
Dad crossed his arms. “Not much, as far as conditions and such. I’m hopeful, if it was the government who got the Internet going again, that they’ll start giving us updates.”
“What about the phone? Does it work, too?”
Dad frowned. He shrugged slightly. “I try it now and then.”
I sat up straighter, faced my father. I was nearly breathless. “Why can’t we go outside now, and see? See what it’s like out there?”
“Eli, you know what it’s like out there.”
“Dad, it’s been years.” I knew I was on the losing side of the debate due to the grim reality of radiation sickness; vile beyond belief, endless puke and diarrhea until you die. Oppenheimer’s cholera.
“Eli, think about who you’re talking to. I do know what it’s like out there. And we’ve got to follow the plan if we have a chance of survival. The day will come when we open the door.”
“How?”
“How what?”
Fists formed at my sides. I fought the urge to shout the words. “The door. How does it open?”
“There’s a time lock, set to open fifteen years from the date we entered.”
I already knew that much. Why was he so damned stingy with the details? I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “Can it be opened before then?”
Dad scratched the stubble on his chin. “Oh, it can. With the code.”
Even though I could assume the answer, I asked anyway. “Who knows the code?”
“I do, of course.”
“Does Mom?”
His lip curled a bit. “I couldn’t risk that. I didn’t want you to know this, but a few months before we came down here she was having some problems.”
This was news to me. “What kind of problems?”
“She was having some panic attacks, extreme anxiety. You were young, and you and your brother and sisters couldn’t have understood that I had access to information about… things.”
“What kind of things?”
“Government information. Mainly the probability of a nuclear attack.”
“But you told Mom?”
He nodded. “She had to be medicated. And she can’t be on antianxiety meds when she’s pregnant. Her first bout of anxiety down here and she’d be running for the door, condemning us all.”
I could see Dad’s having ties to the government, but the stuff about Mom was bull. I didn’t buy it at all. She was mostly calm and functional, especially given everything she’d gone through the past six years. My head started to hurt. I took a moment to rub my eyes. “So you’re the only person who knows the code.”
Dad took a big swig from a light blue bottle of antacid. It gave him a white mustache. He wiped it off with his sleeve. “Eli, I know what you’re thinking. If nothing else, we’re safe down here.”
I met his gaze. “Can the door be opened from the outside?”
“No. Only inside. No one looking for it would ever find it, anyway.” His expression became smug.
The smugness creeped me out. Just my opinion, but people in shelters after nuclear wars have no business being smug. “Why not?”
His hand moved up to scratch his head. “Remember what the land out there looks like?”
From what I could recall, the area was pretty but nondescript, with hills, trees. “Fairly basic landscape.”
“For seven years, workers built this place. For seven years, they traveled forty miles from the closest town, past the stand of pine trees, went a mile, and took a left at a boulder. Then six more miles and several switchbacks in the road until they reached the shuttle.”
“Shuttle?” I tried to keep my voice neutral. The scrsshh scrsshh sound of his scratching drove me crazy.
His hand dropped, coming to a stop on his bottle of antacid. “A bus basically, which took them the rest of the way to the supply entrance. Which was nowhere near the hatch. And of course, on the shuttle ride they were blindfolded.” He took another drink, and then resumed his noisy scratching.
Chills crawled up my spine as a lock of hair slipped off my ear and over one eye. “They knew they were working for you?”
Dad laughed. “Of course not. My accountant took care of everything. They all thought it was for a sultan from the Middle East. Old Phil cooked up one heckuva story. The day they finished, they sealed up the supply entrance. Then they drove away for the last time. The next day the pine trees and boulders and any other landmarks disappeared. There’s no chance they could ever find it again without the GPS coordinates. I made certain they didn’t have those.”
“Why did it have to be so secret?”
Dad leaned back in his chair, his hands finally coming to a rest behind his head. “Don’t be naïve, Eli. People will do anything to survive. Had people known about this place there would have been crowds begging to get in. I couldn’t have that.”
“What about the shuttle driver? Wouldn’t he know how to get here?”
His expression changed. I tried to read it as his eyes darted around the room before fixing on me again. “In the end, I made sure he’d be taken care of.”
My brain tried to embrace everything I’d just heard. “So I can go on the Internet?”
Dad’s eyes narrowed. “It’s been down lately.”
He was lying.
The day before, sitting in the hall outside his office, I had been connected. Just didn’t know it at the time. I couldn’t call him out—tell him that I knew he was lying. Defying my father was not on my list of things to do.
To his face, anyway. Behind his back was another story.
“I’ll let you know when you can go on.” His head leaned toward his bank of flat-screen computer monitors. “These are the only computers connected anyway.”
That’s what he thought. I stood up. “You’ll let me know when I can go on,” I repeated.
He nodded, taking another drink of antacid. I stood up to leave.
“Eli.” His gaze fixed on me so intensely it was almost like being touched. My skin started to crawl.
“Your mother and sisters would only get upset. Unnecessarily upset.”
I needed to get out of there.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” There was no emotion in his voice. My throat tightened. I could only nod.
I left, shutting the door, trying not to sprint down the hall to my room. So I wasn’t imagining things. The Internet was back up. Maybe I could find out what was going on outside these walls. If Dad had kept that information from me, chances were he was keeping other things secret as well. And I intended to find out what those secrets were.
Chapter NINE
ON MY WAY TO GET SOME LUNCH, MY MIND WHIRLED. MAN, first the Internet is connected, and then Dad says it’s not. He lied right to my face. And lying only came that easily when you did it a lot. So what else was he lying about?
Little Miss Perfect skipped down the hall toward me. “Eli, you want to come with me? See the—”
“Shut up.” First my mom, now my little sister. Was Terese that stupid? “How can you be with them? Spend time with them?”
Her chin rose as her hands went to her hips. “Eli. Someone has to take care of them, Mom can’t do it all. Lexie and I have to help.”
I couldn’t do anything but shake my head and walk away. When had the Supplements morphed into family members?
Even pondering it was distasteful. The Supplements were already the
cause of too much weirdness in our world. Like the short-lived experiment with Tea.
We weren’t really drinking tea—we just called our snack time Tea, thanks to Terese and her obsession with everything British. In the early years underground, we snacked on milk and stale cookies. But real milk had died with the cows. The UHT milk lasted a long time, and the powdered milk until Year Four. Dad had counted too much on the cows.
Mistake #47.
One afternoon, Lexie and Terese sat down with me for our afternoon snack of milk and cookies. Mom usually mixed up the powdered milk and poured a glass for each of us. One of those old-fashioned juice glasses with the little flowers on it. I always guzzled mine down, rather than use it to wash down the cookies. For those two and a half seconds every day, I pretended that I was still in the old world, Els standing by to refill my glass with an icy gallon jug of Land O’ Lakes 2 percent.
But that day Mom wasn’t there. Dad was. And the glasses were already filled when he brought the tray to the table. As always, I chugged mine. It didn’t taste like the powdered milk we usually had. It was strange. Not in a bad way. More like the leftover milk at the bottom of a bowl of Cheerios with sugar.
I stuffed a ginger snap in my mouth as Lexie and Terese took their time, sipping their milk after every few bites of cookie. Dad didn’t join us. He just waited until we were finished, then cleared his throat. Without any great theatrics, he told us the powdered milk was gone. And where that day’s milk had come from.
Mom had an electric breast pump, and like a cow, the more she pumped the more she produced. I was thirteen and Lexie was fifteen. Mom and Dad were still getting along. Dad called her his little Holstein, because as long as she ate well and got enough rest, she produced a lot of milk. Plenty for the Supplements.
And for us.
I gagged and leaned over toward the floor.
“What?” Lexie looked up at Dad. She looked as repulsed as I felt.
Dad shrugged. “You’re all still young, growing. You need nutrients wherever you can get them. This milk has calories, vitamin D, folic acid…”
I tuned him out, not wanting to hear some lengthy explanation. Like the scientific facts would justify it all. Like we were all supposed to say, “Oh, Father, thank you again for saving us.”
Yeah, right.
The next day, the glasses were waiting at our spots. I crossed my arms and sat there. But it wasn’t like we had a choice when Dad put his mind to something. My protest was short-lived and in the end I believed I had no choice but to drink it and gag. Lexie and Terese, too. Until one day Dad wasn’t there at Tea time. Mom silently set powdered milk in front of us, and we never had the other “tea” again.
That experience was just another thing in our new world we wouldn’t have even considered in the old.
Like the Supplements.
No way in hell was I going to get to know them. Not if there was the remotest chance they would meet their intended fate.
In the kitchen, over a lunch of warm tortillas from a big batch Mom froze before the flour went bad and fresh salsa, I pulled out a swivel barstool at the counter a few feet away from Lexie. Her long hair was up, and her velour was pink. She picked at her food, ignoring me.
The need to feel normal overwhelmed me. My world seemed so turned on its end that I needed to get a grip. Bothering my sister might help. “You’re pretty in pink.”
Her face turned my way with a hint of a smile.
“No, wait. You’re pretty pathetic in pink.” I laughed.
Her placid expression became a sneer. “Screw you.”
“What has you all cranky on this beautiful day?” I smeared salsa all over my tortilla.
She rolled her eyes. “Mom is just so smug.”
I took a drink of water and slammed my glass on the counter. The smug thing again. Dad might be smug. Mom certainly wasn’t.
Lexie read my mind. “Hello. She’s smug.”
“She’s in a bomb shelter, for cripes’ sake. What the hell does she have to be smug about?”
Lexie ripped her tortilla into little pieces. “Don’t you get it? She has everything she wants. A husband who dotes on her. No worries.”
My laughter was so instantaneous I almost choked. “No worries? Take a look around.”
Lexie sipped her water. “You look. What do most mothers of teenagers worry about?”
I shrugged and stuffed half a tortilla in my mouth, displaying it for her.
“Gross.” She shifted her gaze away from me. “They worry about their kids driving cars because they might be in an accident. They worry if they don’t come home on time. Then there’s drugs, alcohol, tons of crap—”
“What’s your point, Lex?”
One of her hands slapped the counter. “She doesn’t have to worry about any of it. Her kids are all here; her rich husband isn’t going to run off with his secretary.”
With part of a tortilla I scooped up some errant salsa. “You’re forgetting the fact she’s trapped underground with a husband who…” I’d never voiced the truth aloud. I didn’t think I could.
“What?” Lexie had stopped eating to stare at me.
I shrugged.
“Come on, a husband who what? What were you going to say?”
“Nothing.”
She turned to baby talk to taunt me. “Is widdo Ewi afwaid?”
I practically shouted the words. “A husband who breeds new kids to feed to his old ones.”
Lexie’s mouth dropped open.
I didn’t even need to pause for effect. “There’s a type of dinosaur that did the same thing.” I snapped my fingers. “Hey, they could name it after Dad. The Yanakakasaurus.”
Lexie glared at me. “How can you say that?”
I hadn’t meant to. She pissed me off and it just slipped out.
Since it did, I kept going. “God, you are so clueless. He lies to us, all the time. Always has. At least Mom never lies. And I bet she would give anything to have us out in the world, even with all that. I think she would leave this place in a heartbeat.”
Lexie bit her lip. “You’re on her side.”
She was really starting to ruin my lunch. “Last time I checked, we’re all on the same side. The underside.”
“Hello. Eli. We’re not all on the same side.” Lexie launched herself off the stool. “You think you’re better than me, that you’re smarter. In the old world you—” She stopped.
The look on her face made me curious. “What?”
She blew out a big breath. “You were such a brat. You never cared about anybody. You got away with it because you had Eddy. You had your own little wonderful world with your twin always there for you. You never knew what it was like to be lonely.”
As I chewed, I thought about it. She wasn’t wrong.
Her eyes narrowed. “You know what it was like for me?”
Some salsa dripped down my chin. I wiped it off with a paper napkin.
“Of course not, because you never cared enough to ask. At school, everyone was my friend because of who I was, how much money we had. I never really knew if any of my friends liked me for me. You never had to worry about that, because you always had Eddy.”
I crumpled the napkin, dropping it on my plate. “Not anymore.”
“Exactly.” Her words were biting. “Poor Eli, now you’re in the same boat as the rest of us. Guess what. You don’t want to hear it, but you’re like me. And me and you? We’re just like Dad. We don’t care about other people and we’re only out for ourselves.”
I pushed away my empty plate. “That’s a load of bull.”
“It’s true, you know it. Terese is just like Mom. She’s a weird little kid, but she cares about other people. Like Eddy did. That’s why Mom and Terese allow themselves to love the Supplements. Because there is no way they would ever… ever… ever use them for their intended purpose.” She paused. “But you and me? Hell no. I do my work there, and then leave. You stay away completely.”
“Dad says it’s
women’s work.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t blame it on him.”
I rolled my eyes. Then who was I supposed to blame?
“You stay away.” She leaned closer. “Know why? Because you know, deep down, if it comes down to starving, we will… do what we need to do.” She jabbed her finger in the air toward me. “The problem is you’re deluded. You think you’re with Mom and Terese on this one. You aren’t. And the day will come when you have to pick a side.” Lexie reached toward me.
I jumped back.
She laughed. “Freak.” She turned on her heel and walked out, leaving her dishes.
She was wrong.
I hoped she was wrong, anyway. Wrong about me and Dad. Even if I was like Dad. He was brilliant. But was he a good man?
I picked up Lexie’s dishes and put them in the dishwasher with mine. I wiped up some salsa that had spilled on the counter. Without all the kitchen staff we were used to, I’d learned to clean up after myself. Hated it at first, wondered why that couldn’t be women’s work, too, but I’d once read that it only takes twenty days to create a new habit. And I’d had way more than that to change my ways.
Dad came in, holding a book and awkwardly scratching his right arm. “You already have lunch?”
“Yeah.”
Dad sat down and started to read. He looked as if he’d be there for a while.
I hoped so. I wanted to see if the Internet was up. I stopped by my room to grab Eddy’s laptop. I jogged over to Dad’s office. I sat down in the hallway cross-legged, and hit the laptop’s power button. I tapped my leg with the back of my hand. Come on, come on.
And there it was.
Wireless Network Not Available.
“What? No. No. No.” I was right next to the office door. Same spot I was the last time. What was different? Dad. The last time Dad had been in his office. Did he only have it flipped on when he was in there? Just in case someone wandered down the hall with a laptop?
I sat up straight.
That was exactly it.
He couldn’t keep the wireless signal from going out in the hall. It was easier to keep people out of the hall.
And easier still to keep Internet capability off of the computers.
