William Johnstone - The Doomsday Bunker

Trevor looked around. Some people were running in the street in the next block, but there was nobody close to him. He didn’t think he’d need the gun, but still he hesitated. She had told him to load it and keep it with him, and she was usually right…

He sat down behind the wheel again, reached under the seat, and found the hard-plastic case that held the 9mm pistol and two magazines.

It didn’t take him long to slide one of the loaded magazines into the gun. He was about to release the slide when he realized he didn’t know how to put the safety on. He didn’t want to carry around a loaded gun that could go off with just a little pressure on the trigger. Better to leave the slide locked back, he decided, than to take a chance on an accidental discharge.

When he stood up again, he started to tuck the pistol in the waistband of his jeans. Texas was an open-carry state, so he wouldn’t be breaking the law by doing that. Or would he? He seemed to remember that open carry was legal only as long as the weapon was properly holstered and secured. He didn’t have a holster, and sticking the gun in his pants didn’t seem very secure. Maybe if he pulled his shirttails out and let them hang over, that would count as concealed carry. He could try to look it up on his phone, he supposed…

“Hey! Hey, buddy, I need your car! I gotta get outta here!”

Startled, Trevor swung around and saw a man running toward him. The man’s face was twisted and grotesque, and for a second Trevor had the wild thought that this wasn’t a nuclear war, it was the zombie apocalypse.

But then he realized the guy was just scared out of his wits, and the stranger suddenly looked even more terrified as he stumbled to a halt, threw out his hands toward Trevor, and started backing away. “Don’t shoot, please don’t shoot!” he cried.

Trevor looked down and realized he had the Smith & Wesson in his hand, gripped firmly and pointed in the direction of the man who’d accosted him. Evidently the man hadn’t noticed that the slide was locked back. He turned abruptly and sprinted the other way, obviously figuring it would be easier to steal a car from somebody else.

“Huh,” Trevor said.

He shoved the pistol into his waistband, slammed the car door, and locked it. Then he hurried through the side yard toward the fence that ran along the school property.

Jill would have been up and over that fence in a matter of seconds, he thought as he struggled to climb up, threw his leg over, and make it down the other side without falling and breaking his neck. He let go and jumped the last couple of feet, stumbling as he landed. People were running around the school from the front. Trevor joined them. One man had what looked like a tire tool of some sort. He jammed it into the gap next to a door lock and heaved on it. Two more men rushed to help him. With a grinding squeal, the door came open, and there was a chaotic stampede into the school as people shouted for their children.

Trevor realized belatedly that he had no idea where Bailey would be at this time of day. He stumbled along in the mob thronging the hallway, hoping he would spot her, when instead he caught a glimpse of a girl named… Ashley? No, Amber. That was it. She was one of Bailey’s best friends. He lunged and caught hold of her arm.

She screamed and tried to pull away, but he hung on and raised his voice to say, “Amber! Amber, calm down! It’s Mr. Sinclair! I’m Bailey’s dad, remember?”

She ought to remember. She had gone to enough ice cream parlors and pizza places and bowling alleys with them for various parties. She stopped jerking against his grip when she recognized him.

“Mr. Sinclair! Have you seen my mom or dad?”

Trevor didn’t recall what either of Amber’s parents looked like, so he just shook his head. “Where’s Bailey?” he asked. “Do you know where I can find her?”

Amber pointed with her free hand. “I think she was in math class, but she may not be there now.”

If she wasn’t, he was screwed, Trevor thought. He would just have to keep searching for her.

Because there was no way he was going to the Hercules Project without her.

“Go find your folks,” he told Amber as he let go of her and started toward the classroom she had pointed out. It was like swimming against the tide, but he made it eventually.

The door was wide open. Half a dozen kids were still inside, looking scared and lost, but no adult. The teacher must have cut out as soon as he or she got a chance.

“Dad!”

The cry made Trevor’s heart jump. He turned and saw Bailey running toward him from a corner. He opened his arms and she came into them with a flying leap. She hugged him tight, and he returned the embrace, holding her so that her feet were off the floor.

Then she wiggled a little and said, “Dad, what’s that?”

He realized he had her pressed up against the gun. Quickly, he set her down and said, “Don’t worry about that, let’s just go.”

“That’s one of Mom’s semi-automatics. Why do you have a gun? What’s going on? Is it really the end of the world?”

“What? No! Not the end of the world, not at all. But we’ve got to go now. We need to meet up with Mom and your brother.”

“At that place out in the country? The one where we’re supposed to go if anything really bad happens?” They had told the kids a little about the Hercules Project, without going into all the details that might prove to be too disturbing.

“That’s right. We may have to stay there for a while.”

“Then it is the end of the world!”

“Not if your mom and I have anything to say about it, honey,” he told her, wishing that he was really as confident as he was trying to sound. If Jill had been here, she could have said it and meant it.

But then he realized that he did mean it. Whether he was cut out for things like this or not, he was going to get his daughter to safety, one way or another.

“Thank God,” Susan breathed as she lowered the phone from her ear. “Jill just talked to Trevor again. He has Bailey, and all four of them are headed out here.”

“That’s good,” Larkin said as he turned the SUV’s wheel and veered around a car stopped on the side of the road so that half of it stuck out into his lane. Nobody was around or inside it, as far as he could tell. He had seen a surprising number of stopped, apparently abandoned vehicles. He wasn’t sure why the threat of nuclear war seemed to make cars quit running, but evidently it did.

Maybe there were so many people driving, it was just a matter of averages. He had traveled on this winding country road hundreds of times and never seen it like this, almost bumper-to-bumper heading away from town. At least the cars were moving on, although at a much slower speed than usual. The line of traffic stretched as far ahead and behind him as he could see. People honked from time to time, but it wasn’t the cacophony Larkin might have expected.

“This is like that time we were down at the coast and the hurricane came in,” Susan said. “Everybody just wanted to get away from there as quickly as possible.”

“Yeah. People figure big cities will be the main target in a nuclear attack, so they’re heading for the sticks. Not sure they can get far enough away in the time that we’ve got, though.”

Susan leaned forward slightly in the seat and turned her head to peer out through the passenger window at the sky. “It looks so peaceful,” she said. “Nothing up there but a few fluffy white clouds.” She looked over at Larkin. “But we won’t see anything coming until it’s too late, will we?”

“We probably won’t see anything coming at all,” he said.