William Johnstone - The Doomsday Bunker

Anyway, Deb wasn’t that much more attractive than her, Jill thought, so there was no need for her to feel threatened by Trevor’s reaction.

They went through the place from top to bottom, seeing everything there was to see, as far as Jill could tell. She knew from talking to her parents that they were thinking about getting an apartment in one of the missile silos. Those were more expensive, and Jill wondered if she and Trev and the kids wouldn’t do just fine in one of the four-person units along one of the main corridors. The lower level barracks-style arrangement was out of the question. There would be little enough privacy in the four-person unit.

When they were finished with the tour and had paused near the staircase leading back up to the surface, Trevor said, “Can I ask you one more question, Mr. Moultrie?”

“Sure,” Moultrie said with a smile, “if you call me Graham like I asked you to.”

“All right, Graham.” Trevor waved a hand at their surroundings. “This is a big operation. When you get right down to it, it’s a real-estate development.”

Moultrie thought it over and nodded. “I think it’s fair to say that. What’s your question?”

“Every real-estate developer I’ve ever run into has had salesmen working for him, trying to move the property. I didn’t see anybody around here except you and your wife. Where are your salesmen?”

“I don’t have any,” Moultrie replied without hesitation. “Don’t need ’em. The Hercules Project is my baby. Well, mine and Deb’s. You see, Trevor, a guy who buys a big piece of property, cuts it up, and slaps fifty or a hundred houses on it, he’s looking to do one thing: make money. I want to make money, too, but for a different reason. I want to funnel that money back into this place and make it even better. Because in the long run, the goal is to save humanity. You might say we’re trying to save humanity from itself. I know people talk about climate change and natural disasters, but my gut feeling is, if things ever get bad enough to need something like the Hercules Project, it’s going to be because of a war or a man-made plague or something else that we’ve done to ourselves out of sheer greed and stupidity and lust for power.”

Jill said, “That makes it sound like you don’t have a very high opinion of people in general.”

“That’s absolutely right,” Moultrie said, again without missing a beat. “I don’t. No offense, Jill, but you and Trevor aren’t old enough to remember the way things used to be. People had some common sense that’s missing today.”

“Every generation says that about the generation that comes after them,” Trevor said.

Moultrie shrugged. “More than likely. But think about politics. Neither side is willing to admit that the other has any good ideas, isn’t even willing to consider that possibility. If one side does something, the other side says it’s the worst thing that could ever happen. Then they switch around and the dance goes on. They’re so consumed with that and their never-ending quest for power that they’ve let our place in the world slip.”

“You mean nobody fears the United States anymore.”

“It’s not fear so much that I’m talking about. It’s respect.” Moultrie chuckled. “But I’ll be honest with you… a little good old-fashioned fear isn’t a bad thing for your enemies to have, either.”

“Wouldn’t it be better not to have enemies?”

“Now you’re just denying human nature. There will always be people who hate and resent the United States. As messed-up as we are now, as little of a threat as we’ve become compared to what we used to be, there are still plenty of them out there, just hoping something terrible will happen to us. And if they can nudge along whatever that is, they’ll do it, gladly. We’ve seen plenty of evidence of that today.”

“That North Korean missile hitting our fishing boat,” Jill said.

“Exactly,” Moultrie said. “That was a test, all right, but it wasn’t an accident. They aimed that missile right where it landed, just to see how far they could push us. And based on Washington’s reaction so far, now they know: they can push us a little farther.”

“You could be jumping the gun,” Trevor said.

Moultrie shook his head. “I wish I was. But I don’t believe that I am. And that’s why I believe in this place enough to handle every aspect of its development myself. Because things are just going to get worse, a lot worse, before there’s ever a chance of them getting better.”

A strained silence settled over the four of them for a long moment before Deb said, “That’s enough doom and gloom for right now. Let’s go back up to the office. I’ve got a nice bottle of wine. Maybe we could have a drink and talk about something pleasant.”

“Like getting us to sign on the dotted line?” Trevor asked. The bluntness of the question made Jill wince a little. She was usually the more outspoken of the two of them.

Moultrie answered smoothly, though. “Not at all,” he said. “I don’t want you making any decisions today. This is an important step, a very important step, and I want anyone who decides to join us in the project to be absolutely certain they’re doing the right thing. Because who knows…” He smiled again. “I could turn out to be totally wrong about the direction the world is headed.”

Jill might have hoped that was true, that Moultrie was totally wrong.

But looking back over everything that had happened, she was afraid he wasn’t.

Bailey and Chris were smart kids. They knew something was going on. The way their mom and dad had gone to their grandparents’ house for dinner on such short notice, the trip out on Saturday afternoon without any explanation of where they were going… Those things were just enough out of the ordinary to tell the kids that something was up, and there was a strong chance it wasn’t anything good.

Jill could tell that from the way they looked at her. She hated keeping them in the dark, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell them that Mom and Dad were trying to figure out what to do in case the world came to an end. Kids had enough… kid things… to worry about without piling that on top of them as well.

She and Trevor hadn’t talked much on the way home. Despite how pleasant Graham and Deb Moultrie had been, the whole experience was a sobering one, starting with the North Korean missile incident.

Jill ordered pizza. They sat around and watched some cheesy old monster movie on TV. Just a pleasant Saturday evening at home. Then Bailey and Chris, both of them yawning, had gone off to bed. Trevor got a beer out of the refrigerator, carried it into the living room, and sat down next to Jill.

“We have to talk about this,” he said.

She was watching the news with the sound off. The police in Ohio were digging up some guy’s backyard and had found seven bodies so far, with the prospect of more to come.

“Has the world really gone mad,” she said, “or are we just better informed?”

“You mean because we have twenty-four-hour news and more social media than anybody can keep up with?” Trevor shook his head. “I don’t know. I’d really like to believe the world isn’t worse than it used to be, but I just don’t know anymore.”

Jill couldn’t keep a certain savagery out of the gesture as she pushed the button on the remote to turn off the TV. She said, “We have to do it.”

“What? Buy space in that… project? We need to talk about it, sure, but—”

“We talk things to death, Trev. We debate, we ponder, we mull, we think it over. And usually we don’t pull the trigger on anything.”

“That’s not true. We’ve built a fine life for ourselves.” He waved the bottle he held. “Just look around. Nice house, good jobs, great kids.”