William Johnstone - The Doomsday Bunker

Moultrie’s voice came back from the intercom. “What is it, Patrick?”

For a second, Larkin considered what to say, then settled for, “We have a visitor.”

Another second ticked by. Larkin could imagine the stunned expression on Moultrie’s face. Then the man said, “I’ll be right there.”

Moultrie’s office was in the Command Center, so it took him less than a minute to reach the room where Larkin and Andrea were monitoring the equipment. He came in fast, not running, probably because he didn’t want to attract attention until he found out exactly what was going on, but not wasting any time, either.

The creature that had come down the stairs wasn’t visible at the moment. Larkin had a hunch he had slumped against the blast door, exhausted by his efforts. Hell, he might even be dead , Larkin thought.

“What is it?” Moultrie asked. He moved up between Larkin and Andrea so he could see the screen. The dust had cleared away somewhat, but the concrete rubble on the stairs was visible. “Son of a… What happened?”

Before either of the other two could answer, the diseased man loomed into view again, staggering up a couple of steps and looking back over his shoulder.

Moultrie took a step back and let out a startled, “Shit!” He recovered quickly and went on, “That man is dying of radiation poisoning.”

“Looks like he’s most of the way there,” Larkin agreed.

“How did he get down here? Where did that debris come from?”

“There was an impact up above. The best I can figure, a truck rammed the blockhouse and knocked down the door and part of the wall. Then that fella came down the stairs and started beating on the blast door like he wanted in.”

The creature had stopped on the stairs now. He half-turned so he could look directly into the camera.

“He knows we’re watching him,” Moultrie said in a hushed voice.

As if to confirm that, the man lifted a hand that was little more than skin and bones. It trembled badly, but he was able to control it enough to close all of the fingers into a fist.

Except the middle one, which stuck straight up in an unmistakable gesture of defiant anger.

Then he turned and shuffled up the steps, eventually going out of sight in the dust that lingered in the remains of the blockhouse.

Andrea broke the horrified and astounded silence by asking, “Did a zombie just give us the finger?”

“He’s not a zombie,” Larkin said. “He’s a human being like us… except he ran out of luck and we didn’t.” He turned his head to look at Moultrie. “And judging by what I saw on the motion sensors before things got crazy, he’s not the only one up there.”

Moultrie’s face was stony and so was his voice as he said, “Well, that’s liable to be a problem.”

Moultrie swore Larkin and Andrea to secrecy. “We need to figure out what we’re going to do about this before it becomes public knowledge,” he said. “We’ve known all along there was at least a chance there’d be survivors on the surface. But knowing that intellectually and then seeing that poor devil…”

Andrea shuddered and said, “I’ll never forget that face. I’m afraid I’ll be seeing it in my nightmares from now on. And what if that man was, well, one of the ones who’s in better shape…?”

“We’ll deal with this, don’t worry,” Moultrie assured her.

Larkin could tell that Andrea was very shaken up for the rest of their shift, however. As they were leaving the Command Center after going off duty, he asked her, “Are you going to be all right?”

“I suppose,” she said, not meeting his eyes. “I just can’t stop thinking… that could have been any of us, couldn’t it, Patrick?”

“Well, yeah, I guess so, although it’s more likely that if we’d been caught aboveground when the bomb hit, we’d have been killed right away. Any survivors from around here must have been able to take shelter somewhere underground.” Something else had occurred to him. “It’s possible that these folks, the ones who rammed the blockhouse, they’ve come in from somewhere else, farther away from the blast area. But not far enough to escape the radiation. Not only that, the water and anything they could find to eat around here would be contaminated, too, not to mention any dust that’s still in the air.”

In a small voice, Andrea said, “I’ve heard that it takes two hundred years for a place to be safe again after a nuclear explosion. We’re going to be down here for generations, aren’t we? You and I, we’ll never live long enough to see the sunlight again.”

“I don’t believe that,” Larkin said with a shake of his head. “That two hundred years figure is way overblown. With proper protection, we ought to be able to leave the bunker and have a look around within another four to six months.”

“But you don’t know that.”

He shrugged. “I guess it all depends on what the instruments tell us about surface conditions.”

“And when we do go out there, we’ll have to face those… zombies.”

Larkin made a face. “Don’t call ’em that. If people start thinking that way, it’ll just lead to more trouble. They’re not monsters or mutants or anything else from movies. They’re just human beings with a disease.”

Andrea didn’t look convinced, but Larkin didn’t spend any more time trying to convince her. As long as she kept her mouth shut about what she’d seen, it didn’t really matter what she thought of the radiation-riddled survivors. They might haunt her nightmares, but it wouldn’t make any practical difference.

Anyway, the whole thing might well be moot, Larkin thought. By the time an exploratory party from the Hercules Project could go up to the surface, any survivors who had lived through the blast or come into the area from elsewhere would probably be dead. The radiation sickness would not be denied.

Andrea headed back to her quarters in Corridor Two while Larkin returned to his apartment. Susan was still at the medical clinic, he supposed. He sat down and for a while tried to read, but he couldn’t get the image of what he had seen out of his mind.

The crude gesture the man in the stairwell had made was one thing. The look in his eyes, deep-set and burning in the gaunt, haggard face, was something else again. Larkin wasn’t sure if he had ever seen as much pure hatred and venom in anyone’s gaze as he had witnessed there. It was the hatred of someone who was doomed and knew it, directed toward those who still had a chance to survive.

If that man ever got a chance, he would kill each and every one of them, just to take them to hell with him. Larkin was sure of that.

Unable to concentrate, he put his book away and started preparing some supper for when Susan got home. It was nothing fancy, just a bacon and potato omelet, but fancy cooking was pretty much out of the question down here. Some of the people from the lower bunker had the attitude that the ones who dwelled in the silo apartments lived in the lap of luxury. True, they had more privacy, but the other day-to-day aspects of living were pretty much the same.

Susan came in while he was still working on the food. She stepped up behind him, put her arms around his waist, and hugged him hard as she rested her head against his broad back.

“Not that I’m complaining,” Larkin said, “but what’s that about?”

“Patrick.”

Something in her voice made him turn away from the stove so he could look at her. Her face was set in grim lines. He immediately felt a surge of fear that something had happened to Jill or Trevor or one of the kids, but before he could ask, Susan went on, “I know what you saw today. Graham called in some of us from the medical staff and told us.”