William Johnstone - The Doomsday Bunker

“And all of it could go away in a flash. Literally.”

Trevor swallowed some of the beer, sat back on the sofa, and frowned. “We live in Tornado Alley, you know. There’s a lot more of a chance that an F5 will come along and blow us all away than there is of nuclear war.”

“And there’s a safe room in the garage, isn’t there?” The bedrock in their neighborhood was less than two feet under the ground. The cost of blasting it out and building a storm shelter was prohibitive, or at least they had decided it was. The safe room built into the back corner of the garage was a viable alternative. “A tornado might destroy the neighborhood, but with even a little warning, we can at least survive and rebuild. But if there’s some worldwide disaster, or even something that was confined to this country, there won’t be any rebuilding for a long time. You know what they say: The people who are killed right away in a nuclear war will be the lucky ones.”

“Nobody knows that for sure. It’s all theory.”

“One that I’d just as soon not test,” Jill said. “Just before the story about the serial killer came on, they were talking about how the Russians and Iranians have warned us not to overreact to what happened with the North Korean missile. Not that we were going to do anything anyway, but now they’ve put us on notice that if we take action against North Korea, they’ll take action against us. Can’t you see where this is going?”

“It’s not going anywhere,” Trevor insisted. “Even in the old days, before our government started apologizing for everything it’s ever done or ever might do, all that would happen is that we’d talk tough, and then the Russians would talk tough, and then we’d all move on to something else. It’s a game. A show.” He laughed. “A game show. Who Wants to Rule the World? ”

“Also not funny.”

“It was a little bit funny.”

Jill didn’t say anything. Her phone was lying on the coffee table in front of her. She leaned forward and reached for it.

“I’ve made up my mind,” she said. “You can do what you want.”

Trevor took a deep breath. “I’m going to do what I always do,” he said. “I’m going to be with you.”

June 5

Writing a check that big was painful for Larkin. Literally painful, because he was gripping the pen so hard it made the little touch of arthritis in his thumb joints twinge.

But he wrote it anyway, then tore it out of the checkbook and slid it across the desk to Graham Moultrie. He and Susan had already signed a big stack of forms that came from the printer wirelessly connected to Deb’s computer. Larkin hoped the check for $68,000 would be the last thing he’d have to sign today.

“That should do it,” Moultrie said as he picked up the check and put it in a desk drawer.

“You understand that covers Susan and me, plus Jill and Trevor and their kids,” Larkin said.

“Of course. When they came in to sign their contracts, they explained that you’d be writing one check for the entire family. That’s fine, Patrick. However you want to arrange things like that, it makes no difference to me.”

“I just don’t want there to be any question about, uh, who gets let in. You know, when the time comes.”

“If the time comes.” Moultrie smiled. “We all hope and pray it never will.”

“Sure. But you know what I mean.”

“Of course.” Moultrie tapped the fingerprint scanner on his desk. “That’s why we have everyone’s prints in our system now. That’s your key to get in, so to speak, if there’s ever any question.”

“What if there’s a power failure?” Susan asked. “Or an EMP that knocks out all the computers?”

“That’s why our mainframes and servers are all down below, behind not only digital firewalls but literal walls hardened against electromagnetic pulses. I want our systems to be as secure as the government’s systems.” Moultrie grunted. “Actually, more secure, I’d hope, considering how many times the government’s computers have been hacked in the past ten years. However, in the unlikely event that everything goes down, we’ll have a master hard copy list of all our residents. Nobody who’s supposed to be here will be turned away, you have my word on that.”

“Turned away,” Susan repeated quietly. “I hadn’t thought about that. If things go bad… really bad… people may try to take shelter in here.”

With a solemn expression on his face, Moultrie nodded. “That’s true. It’s liable to be a very unpleasant situation.”

“Like people fighting over lifeboats on a sinking ship,” Larkin said. “Could get ugly in a hurry.”

“That’s one reason our outer perimeter is so secure,” Moultrie said. “You remember, Patrick, we talked about that the first time you came out here.”

Larkin nodded. “Yeah, you thought of that, too.”

Moultrie clasped his hands together on the desk and said, “I can tell what you’re thinking, Susan. You’re thinking, how can we just turn people away in case of a disaster? How can we refuse to let them in when it means they’ll probably die?” He shook his head. “I don’t like that possibility any more than you do. But there’s a term that someone used once as the title of a story... “The Cold Equations.” Numbers have no emotion. They add up, or they don’t. You can’t negotiate with them and convince them to mean anything other than what they do. Only so many people can survive down here. One or two might not make a difference. An extra hundred means that everybody starves to death a couple of years earlier… and that couple of years might make all the difference. That’s assuming that overconsumption might not cause the air and water recycling plants to break down. Everything is figured to a certain tolerance level. Go much beyond that level and it’s not going to work.”

“I understand that,” Susan said. “But I’m in the business of helping people and saving lives.”

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to do here, too. I know it sounds cold-blooded as hell, but yes, I’ll turn people away—whatever it takes to do that—in order to save the people who are depending on the project for their survival. I’ve been aware of that possibility right from the start.”

A grim silence settled over the four people in the room. It was easy to talk about the end of the world in abstract, Larkin thought, harder to accept just how much death and destruction might be lurking out there in the darkness, waiting to strike senselessly and wantonly.

“All right, that’s enough brooding,” Deb said. “Maybe nothing happens except that Graham and I get rich and everybody goes on living.”

“That’s the spirit,” Moultrie said with a chuckle. “You’ve got the installment-payment paperwork?”

Larkin tapped the stack of documents on the desk in front of him. “Got it, along with all the other disclaimers and waivers and guarantees and indemnifiers.”

“You’re all set, then.” Moultrie stood up and extended a hand. “Welcome to the Hercules Project. Come visit us any time you like while we continue working on the place, and we’ll all hope and pray that visiting is all you ever have to do.”

“Amen to that,” Larkin said as he stood up and gripped Moultrie’s hand.

The death toll from the destroyed American fishing boat was seventeen men. Their bodies were never recovered from the icy Bering Sea. A memorial service was held for them, but the President did not attend. He issued a statement that expressed his regret for the incident, then went on to deplore the rhetoric employed by members of the opposition party who considered the boat’s sinking to be an act of war, rather than an unfortunate accident in the cause of furthering scientific research. The President did not call on the North Koreans for an apology, nor did they offer one.