by Tom Abrahams
He handed her the bread and she chomped at it, grabbing it whole with her teeth. She took it over to a round rug at the center of the room and lay down to take her time with the bread.
“I think I’d rather be with you than people,” said Danny. He took two steps over to the bed and plopped down onto the thin mattress. “I kinda feel like we should be out there. Not in here.”
Maggie ignored him as she slopped her way through the bread. He was glad to see her eating. It was hit and miss. Some days she was voracious. Others she was listless and disinterested. She finished the bread and started licking the crumbs from the rug.
“I don’t know,” Danny said. “The people here are nice enough and all, but I don’t feel like we really belong. Besides, there was something adventurous about being outside on the surface.”
Danny knew it was crazy talk. The surface was contaminated with toxins. The degree varied by the proximity to the blasts, but it was all crap. Nothing was really safe, not in the pre-attack sense of the word. Being underground was far preferable for those who wanted to survive.
That was wherein Danny’s dilemma took hold. Did he want to survive? Did he want to spend the rest of his life underground? Ritz had been happy to see him because the group, as it had been, was already growing tired of itself. They wanted someone new to liven up the party.
How would it be in six months or a year? Ritz and Hal, two nice guys, already had tension brewing between them. What would happen when less amenable OASIS dwellers got sick of one another? It was a different but altogether equally lethal type of toxicity. People weren’t meant to live cooped up underground any more than they were supposed to breathe radioactive particles into their lungs.
Danny patted the bed and Maggie sprang from the floor. She hopped onto the mattress, chased her tail for a couple of revolutions, and curled into a ball next to him, resting her head on his thigh.
He stroked her head. She closed her eyes.
“I don’t think I can stay cooped up in here for eternity,” he said to her. “I don’t think you can either. If there’s a chance to get outside, I think we need to take it at some point.”
The walls of his room were a mixture of stone and plaster. They were relatively straight but not exactly plumb. His walls were bare. He hadn’t taken the time to hang anything on them, mostly because he didn’t have anything to hang. Despite his ability to come and go from the room as he pleased, it felt to him like a cell might feel to a prisoner.
The bed was a thin twin mattress atop a piece of plywood cut to fit atop an array of cinderblocks. It was pressed against the corner opposite the door. It also served as a lounger, or daybed, and was the most comfortable piece of furniture in the room. He had a foam pillow, sheets, and a wool-blend blanket.
Next to the bed, on what amounted to be the back wall of the room, was a simple desk with drawers and cabinets. The chair was foldable plastic.
There was an open wardrobe with shelves on the wall to the right of the entry. It had a bar with a few wire hangers atop the shelves. Danny kept his things, what few he had, in the wardrobe.
There was a circular rug on the center of the floor. It was more of a bathmat than a rug and had rubber webbing on the bottom to keep it from sliding out of place. That was it. That was Danny’s home. The toilets, sinks, and showers were in a shared bathroom at the bottom of the corkscrew. Gravity helped with the water pressure, but it was still weak by pre-attack standards. Danny and the others were asked to keep shower length to less than three minutes. They didn’t flush unless there was more than urine in the toilets.
Danny didn’t ask where the waste went. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Trash, which consisted mostly of food waste, was either composted and used in the gardening room or it was incinerated. From what Ritz had told him, he knew the power generator was under the bottom of the corkscrew, as was the water filtration.
The deeper one traveled into the complex, the more evident the generator’s gentle vibration became. There was a constant ambient hum that permeated the entire complex. Danny had noticed it his first day in the OASIS. After that, it became white noise and he couldn’t hear it.
Despite the simplicity of his own quarters, the compound was impressively advanced. The architects had an answer for everything but boredom and claustrophobia.
Danny spent the next hour sitting on the bed, staring at the empty walls and petting his dog, his mind drifting in and out of coherent thought. He was almost asleep when a knock at his door startled him and made Maggie jump from the bed. She loped to the door and started sniffing at the gap at the floor.
“Who is it?” Danny asked, sitting up on the edge of the bed.
“It’s Ritz.”
“C’mon in.”
The door opened and Ritz, smiling as usual, slid inside. He shut the door behind him and leaned against it.
He ran his hand along the short trim of his hair and then scratched the top of his head. Maggie was at his side, sniffing and assessing.
“Hey,” said Ritz, “I’m sorry about earlier. That breakfast got awkward really fast.”
“It’s fine,” said Danny. He didn’t want to talk about it.
“I didn’t realize you’d been alone,” said Ritz. “I imagine that’s—”
Danny waved him off. “Don’t worry about it. It’s in the past. I’m here now. The newest and last member of the OASIS clan.”
Ritz chuckled. “That might not be the case. That’s why I’m here.”
“What do you mean?” asked Danny, his interest piqued.
“There might be more coming.”
“Who?”
“Well,” said Ritz, “I say they’re coming, but it’s more like we might need to go get them.”
Danny stood from the bed and stepped toward Ritz. “Go outside?”
Ritz looked at the floor and nodded. “I know it’s not ideal, but since you’re the newest—”
“It’s fine,” said Danny. “I’m fine with it. When do I leave? Where do I go?”
Ritz blinked and tilted his head to one side. “That’s not the reaction I was expecting.”
Danny swallowed and searched for a response other than I need to get out of here. He shrugged. “Everyone should have the chance to stay here as long as we have room for them. If I can help bring others to the sanctuary of the OASIS, I’m happy to do it. It’s the least I can do.”
Ritz stared at Danny for a moment, measuring the response. Then he nodded and smiled.
“Makes sense,” he said. “C’mon, follow me.”
Danny followed Ritz into the hallway, trailed by Maggie, who kept pace at Danny’s side. They wound their way back up the corkscrew toward the kitchen and the rooms at the top of the compound.
They made their way back to the main entrance. It was a sleek, modern space that was different than the rest of the OASIS. To their side was the concierge sitting at her glass and chrome desk. Danny had learned her name was Betty. She wore the same bright smile, thin yellow sweater, and dark blue pencil skirt she’d worn the first day he’d seen her more than a month earlier.
Ritz stopped at her desk and greeted her. He said something that Danny couldn’t hear. Betty nodded and handed him a key.
Danny looked at the key in Ritz’s hand as his friend walked toward him. It was unusual, not because it was an old-fashioned skeleton key, but because none of the other rooms in the OASIS had locks. There was a general understanding that if a door was open, anyone could enter. If it was closed, one had to knock and ask for permission.
Since nobody had anything of real value and everyone knew each other, there was no concern about theft or assault. Danny thought it naive and a bizarrely utopian way of thinking, but he played along.
Ritz walked past Danny to a door opposite Betty’s desk. Danny glanced at her, she smiled at him cheerfully, and he followed Ritz to the door. He’d never noticed it before, even though he’d been to the main entry a handful of times since his arrival.
In a fluid
set of moves, Ritz slid the key into the lock, turned it, swung open the door, and removed the key. He walked it back to Betty, handed it to her, and then waved Danny through the door.
Once Danny and Maggie had cleared the threshold, Ritz closed the door behind them. Like the rest of the OASIS, it was lit by sconces evenly spaced along the walls. They walked for a short distance along what Danny could sense was a shallow rise in their elevation. In the distance, he heard the murmur and faint echo of a conversation. He couldn’t make out the words or determine who was talking until they’d reached the end of the rise and entered a room that widened into a rectangular space.
The room looked like a command center. There were tables strewn with maps and diagrams, electronic consoles connected to wires, which ran along the walls and ceiling in a web Danny couldn’t make sense of. And there was the distinct odor of hot coffee.
Sitting around the desks and at the consoles were three people Danny recognized but hadn’t spent much time getting to know. All of them turned when Danny entered the room. Their eyes drifted to Maggie. None of them looked thrilled to see the dog.
One was the doctor who’d examined him when he’d first arrived. Everyone called him Doc. He was a middle-aged man with a full head of hair that always looked as if it hadn’t been brushed. His thick black-rimmed glasses sat low on his nose.
He was taller than Danny, maybe six feet two or three. He carried a heavy gut despite appearing thin from behind. His face was permanently concerned. A quartet of lines, like waves drawn on paper, decorated his brow. He frowned even when he wasn’t frowning. He spoke deliberately, apparently measuring every word he uttered.
Another was a woman named Gilda. Danny had met her in passing in the hydroponic greenhouse, where they grew algae and potatoes. She had a green thumb. She was average height but muscular, her white-blond hair pulled back into a tight bun atop her head, which accentuated the strength of her neck and shoulders.
The third was the man at the controls of a radio. He had over-the-ear headphones wrapped around his neck and wore a Los Angeles Dodgers sweatshirt. His brown skin, smooth and even, belied his age. The white hair that wrapped his temples and framed his bald head gave it away. He was probably in his late forties, but if he shaved the gray and went bald, Danny figured he might pass for late twenties.
His name was Victor. He had been an electrical engineer before the attacks, and he’d wired the room with communications equipment. He was the first of the three to speak.
“Welcome to the hub,” he said. “It’s good to have you here.”
“Welcome,” echoed the others.
Maggie sat at Danny’s side. She was panting. The room was warmer than the rest of the compound given the heavy dose of electronics humming and whirring on its tables.
“Thanks,” said Danny. “Good to be here.”
Ritz opened his mouth to speak when one of the radios interrupted him. A voice, buried in static but audible, squawked through a tabletop speaker in front of Victor.
“Hello, K6VWV, are you still there? This is Michael. We’re considering your offer. Over.”
Victor raised a finger with a sly smile and slid the headphones over his ears. He raised the attached mic to his mouth and keyed a button on a keyboard in front of him.
“Hi, Michael. This is K6VWV. I’m here. We’re here. Take your time. There’s no rush, but we are getting together a team to come get you. Over.”
Danny watched the room. Everybody’s eyes were on the speaker atop the desk. They were waiting for a response.
Gilda folded her arms across her chest. Her neck flexed. Her bun was unmoved. Danny thought he’d caught her stealing a glance at him, but he wasn’t sure.
Doc tugged on his pants, pulling them up across his belly, and worked to tuck in his shirt. And then the response came. It sounded as if the sender were on another planet or transmitting through a tin can on the end of a string.
“This is Michael,” the voice said through the static. “Can you accommodate four of us? Over.”
Victor pressed the key and pinched the mic’s windscreen between his fingers. “Yes. As we discussed previously, we can accommodate you. We have plenty of room for—” He kept the mic keyed but paused to look down at a pad of paper on the table in front of him. He squinted and read from the notes. “—you, William, Keri, and Barker. It’s not a problem. Over.”
“We’ll get back to you soon,” said Michael. “Thank you. Over.”
“We’ll be listening,” said Victor. “Over.”
Victor pulled the headphones from his ears, draping them again around his neck. He leaned back in his chair and motioned toward the others in the room. He introduced them and explained why they’d called Danny into the hub.
“You’re the most recent of us to be outside,” he said. “That is, you were the last one here.”
“I’m the first to go?” asked Danny. He knew it sounded defensive, even though he hadn’t intended it. He was okay with leaving the confines of the underground corkscrew. “Ritz told me you wanted me to go on an expedition.”
“Not exactly,” said Victor. He unplugged the headphones from the radio and stood from his seat. He walked over to the others and joined them, like a troika conferring before a military action.
“Gilda,” he said, “would you like to explain?”
Gilda nodded. Her voice was softer, more feminine than Danny had expected. “We believe you have a better understanding of the conditions we’ll face. We need that insight.”
“And…we…like that you have a dog,” said Doc, pausing before critical words he wanted to emphasize. “Your dog could…come in handy. We know she was helpful to you in…extreme…circumstances.”
“I’ll be leading the expedition,” said Gilda. “Victor and Ritz will come along. Victor is our radioman. Ritz is a paramedic. You and Maggie are…”
Danny raised an eyebrow. Maggie’s ears pricked. “Just me and Maggie,” he said.
Gilda eyed him up and down, as if taking stock of his plusses and minuses. She furrowed her brow, pulling her bun forward on the top of her head. “I don’t follow.”
Danny shrugged. “I don’t have any particular skills. I’m just the dude with a dog.”
Victor smiled broadly. “No, that’s not it. As we said, you’ve been out there more recently. Having the dog helps.”
“It doesn’t matter what the reason is,” Danny said. “You don’t have to sell me. I’m in. If we need to go get people, I’m good with it.”
“Good,” said Victor. “That’s good.”
“Is this the first rescue mission?” Danny asked. “Have you done this sort of thing before? I know most of us aren’t original OASIS.”
Gilda shook her head. “No.”
“Not even for your family members or friends?” Danny pressed. The morning’s breakfast conversation had him thinking about what the other survivors had lost. Was he the only one who had nothing to lose?
Gilda tensed and narrowed her eyes. But she didn’t answer. She let Doc handle it.
“We’ve been…selective,” he began. “We need people of…certain types, who bring…assets to our small…community.”
“Assets?”
“People need to pull their weight,” said Gilda, “or bring something unique. None of us had family that survived the attack. A couple of the others you referred to as not being original OASIS were friends of ours. They made their way here on their own.”
Danny nodded toward the radio. “What do these people offer? Michael and the others?”
The troika exchanged knowing glances. They all knew the answer but, from Danny’s perspective, couldn’t decide whether or not to share it. Doc nodded at the other two and sighed before offering the explanation.
“They’re young,” said Doc. “They’re smart. That’s…important. We know they have different areas of study, which could be…beneficial. Intellectual diversity is a key component of any…burgeoning…micro-society.”
“And tw
o of them are a couple,” interjected Gilda, her ice blue gaze lingering on Danny in a way that sent a bolt of electricity through his chest. “We need babies. Long term. Down the road. We need people who can procreate. Because when we get old, we’ll need younger people to take care of us.”
Danny blurted out a chuckle. Then he caught himself and pressed his lips together in silence.
“What’s funny?” asked Gilda, frowning as if he’d hurt her feelings. There was a chink in the armor.
“Nothing,” said Danny.
“Danny?” asked Victor in a way that prompted a response.
Danny sighed. “It’s just that I don’t think any of us are going to live that long. We’ve all been exposed to the radiation. I’ve rolled around in the ash, breathed it in, wiped it off my face. Long-term survival is a pipe dream.”
Doc’s perpetual frown deepened. “Then…why…are you here?”
Four sets of eyes settled on him. Danny flushed with embarrassment. He shouldn’t have chuckled. He shouldn’t have spoken up.
They were right to ask. Why was he here? Why had he fought to find a place to stay, to defend himself against the intruders at Ken and Barbie’s house? That, he assumed, was instinct.
“The short term,” he answered.
Doc’s stoic face twitched. Gilda smirked. Victor smiled.
“Short term it is,” said Victor. “I think—”
The radio behind him chirped, and a burst of static gave way to Michael offering his group’s decision. Victor slid back to his chair and plugged in his headset.
“This is Michael. Are you listening, K6VWV? Over.”
Victor adjusted the mic at his face and shifted his weight in his chair. He pressed the key and spoke calmly in a voice slightly dissimilar from his normal conversational tone.
“Hello, Michael. This is K6VWV. We copy you loud and clear. Your signal is good. Do you copy? Over.”
“I copy, Victor,” said Michael. “We’ve decided to take you up on your offer. We’ll come to your place. Over.”
Victor checked with the others over his shoulder, who nodded their approval. He turned back to the radio and pressed the transmission key. “Excellent. We copy that. Give us a day to organize and we’ll be on our way. Bring what you can carry on your back. Keep this channel open in case we need to touch base. Over.”
