William Johnstone - The Doomsday Bunker

“Oh. Actually, I’m glad he did. He asked Andrea and me to keep our mouths shut about it, and I know it would have been hard keeping a secret from you.”

“Was it really as… terrible… as he made it sound?”

“It was pretty bad,” Larkin said. He turned back to the omelet so he could fold it over. Thinking about what he had seen in the Command Center blunted his hunger a little, but he could still eat. Like any good Marine, it took a lot to kill his appetite completely. He went on, “But it wasn’t anything we hadn’t considered a possibility all along.”

“If people like Beth Huddleston knew about this, they’d be demanding that we open the doors and let those survivors in so we can help them.”

“There’s not a damn thing we can do for them.” Larkin’s voice was a little harsher than he intended, but he knew he spoke the truth. “The most merciful thing any of those poor bastards could get is a bullet in the head.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say, but I’m not sure I can argue with it. The reason Graham called us in was because he wanted to find out if there’s anything we could do for them, any way we might be able to help them.” Susan shook her head. “All the doctors agreed, there’s nothing we can do other than giving them drugs to ease the pain a little. Even if we still had access to the best hospitals in the world, anyone as sick from radiation as the man Graham described wouldn’t live much longer.”

Larkin slid the omelet from the pan onto a plate and cut it in two. A frown creased his forehead as he said, “Maybe they’re not all in that bad a shape.”

“What do you mean?”

“I saw enough bogeys on the motion detectors to tell me that several people were moving around up there. Our visitor isn’t alone. Maybe the others sent him because they weren’t sure what he’d find down here and they considered him the most expendable.”

“That’s a pretty bleak way to look at it.”

“Life’s a pretty bleak business a lot of the time. Now more than ever.”

“Even if you’re right, what difference does it make if some of the other survivors aren’t as sick as the man you saw?”

“This guy pounded on the blast door, but even if it had been a regular door, he was too weak to do any damage. He wasn’t any kind of a threat.” Larkin paused. “I wonder if we can say that about the other survivors left up there.”

June 3

Despite Moultrie’s orders and the efforts of everyone who knew what had happened, during the next week it proved impossible to keep the developments completely secret. Larkin knew he didn’t even hint about the matter to anyone who wasn’t already in the loop, and he didn’t believe that Susan had said anything, either.

But someone must have, because rumors began to fly, especially in the lower bunker, that something was still alive on the surface. No one seemed to know exactly what it was. Speculation ran rampant. Most of it seemed to spring from horror movies… from zombies to mutants—or mutant zombies—to animals that had been given super-intelligence by the radiation and were now walking around on two legs and building futuristic weapons, to aliens who had arrived from outer space to investigate the aftermath of Earth’s nuclear war. None of those fanciful things approached the grim reality of what Larkin had seen.

The excitement—or apprehension was probably a better word for it—didn’t affect the election. Some of the residents from Corridors One and Two had lobbied to be included, and even some of the silo dwellers wanted to be part of it, too. The organizers—Charlotte Ruskin’s friends, although not Ruskin herself because she was running for one of the posts—declared the election open to all residents of the Hercules Project who were of voting age. So the turnout was fairly high, but that didn’t change the results that Larkin expected. Charlotte Ruskin and Jeff Greer were elected to represent the residents. The fix had been in from the first, to Larkin’s way of thinking, and even if two of the other candidates had won, they still would have been taking their marching orders from Charlotte.

However, when Moultrie called a meeting of his senior staff to discuss the situation on the surface, Ruskin and Greer weren’t there. They would pitch a fit if they ever found out about being excluded, but evidently Moultrie didn’t trust them and didn’t care.

Larkin was a little surprised that he was invited. He held no official position other than being a member of the security force, but he knew that over the months Moultrie and Chuck Fisher had come to place a lot of confidence in him. Besides, Susan was a member of the inner circle when it came to the medical staff, due to her practical knowledge and tireless efforts to help keep the residents as healthy as possible. Larkin knew from talking to her that at first some of the doctors had resisted bringing a “mere” nurse into their top-level discussions, but the more pragmatic among them had won over the ones with swelled heads.

Maybe Moultrie figured that whatever was discussed at the meeting, Susan would tell him about it anyway, Larkin mused as they walked into the big conference room. That wasn’t necessarily true, but he didn’t mind being here. He wanted to know what was going on.

Larkin’s gaze went around the table where people were talking quietly among themselves. He saw two of the doctors, Jessica Kenley and Stan Davis. A group of engineers and environmental experts, including Doug Liu, Sharon Bastrop, Will Grover, and Larry Milstead, clustered at one end of the table. Curtis Jackson from logistics and supplies sat with his hands clasped on the table in front of him. Down near the other end, Chuck Fisher stood with his hands on the back of a chair and a frown on his face.

Fisher caught Larkin’s eye and nodded a greeting. While Susan went to talk to the other medical personnel, Larkin drifted in Fisher’s direction.

“Wondering why you’re here?” the security chief asked.

“Because no meeting is complete without my good looks and wit?”

Fisher grunted. “Not exactly. You’re officially second in command of the security force now.”

“I don’t recall asking for a promotion.”

“You’re being appointed, not offered a job. That means you can’t say no. Not that I’d expect you to want to.”

“You’re right,” Larkin said. “Thanks, Chuck. I’ll try not to let you down.”

“If we believed you might let us down, Graham and I wouldn’t have made this decision. You’ve earned it. You’ve always been there and done anything we’ve asked you to do. Anyway, you know more about the enemy than anyone else.”

“The enemy?” Larkin repeated as a frown creased his forehead.

“You know.” Fisher gestured with a blunt thumb. “Up there. You’ve looked one of them in the eye. It was through a camera lens, but still…” Fisher shrugged. “We’ve seen the footage, of course, but seeing it live is different.”

Larkin wasn’t sure if he would refer to the people on the surface as “the enemy.” What had happened to them wasn’t really their fault, other than trusting to luck to keep them alive in case of a nuclear war. And more than 99.9 percent of the population had done exactly the same thing.

On the other hand, Larkin had seen the expression on the mutilated face of the survivor who had come down from the blockhouse. Disease had done more than ravage that man’s body. It had turned him mad with resentment and filled him with hate. He would have done harm to the residents if he’d been able to get into the Hercules Project, and in a very real way, that did make him “the enemy.”