William Johnstone - The Doomsday Bunker

Now she knew that her instincts hadn’t deceived her. She’d been right all along.

That is, if she could trust Charles Trahn. He certainly looked sincere, and he looked more than a little afraid of her, too. That was enough to convince her he was speaking the truth.

She reached out and caught hold of his arm. He flinched and tried to pull away, but her grip tightened. Her jaw was tense as she said, “Tell me everything you know.”

“I… I already did—”

“No, you didn’t. How did he look? Is he all right?”

“Well… not too bad, I guess,” Trahn said. “Understand, I didn’t get a very long look at him. Like I told you, Moultrie cut all the feeds except his private one. But your husband… Mr. Ruskin… looked like he’d had a hard time of it. You know it’s bound to have been pretty bad up there on the surface.”

Pretty bad was putting it mildly, Charlotte Ruskin thought. Hell on earth was more like it.

“Was he sick?”

Trahn swallowed. “Yeah, I guess. He had some, you know, sore places on his face. And I could tell he hadn’t had enough to eat for a long time. But he was moving around okay and seemed strong enough. He had, like, a notebook and a marker, and that’s how he wrote the message he held up to the surveillance camera. He asked about you. He wanted to know if you were in here and okay.”

She had to close her eyes and take several deep breaths. Emotions ran riot inside her. Chief among them was relief that Nelson was still alive, but she also felt a surge of pure rage that Graham Moultrie had known about this and not told her. He would have let her go on thinking her husband was dead. She would have continued mourning for him.

When she opened her eyes, she asked, “What did Moultrie tell him?”

“I have no idea.”

“Who else knew?”

“You mean about your husband? Uh, besides me, there was only one other guy on duty at the security monitors right then. A guy named Pierce Watson.” Trahn shook his head. “He’ll never say anything, though. He thinks Mr. Moultrie is God.”

“But you don’t.”

“He’s just as human as the rest of us. He can make mistakes. Or make decisions based on his own self-interest.”

“What about the others? Who else?”

“Let me think.” Trahn frowned for a few seconds, then said, “I believe Jill Sinclair was on duty in the Situation Room, and I don’t remember seeing her come out. Mr. Moultrie wasn’t there at first, and he came in, in a hurry, so I guess Jill called him. He had Chuck Fisher and Patrick Larkin with him. Larkin is Jill’s dad—”

“I know who he is,” Charlotte Ruskin broke in. “So the four of them were in the Situation Room?”

“Yeah. And a minute or so after they went in there, Mr. Ruskin held up the notebook with the message he’d printed on it and then the rest of the feeds went down. So I know Mr. Moultrie had to give the order. That was the time line.”

“The bastard.”

Trahn assumed correctly who she was talking about and said, “I’m sure Mr. Moultrie felt like he had a good reason—”

“He’s a damned tyrant, that’s his reason. How dare he keep that from me!”

“Yeah, I didn’t feel like that was right. That’s why I finally decided to come and find you—”

Charlotte Ruskin took hold of his arm again. “Don’t say anything about this to anybody.”

Trahn looked confused and scared again. “I thought you’d want people to know.”

“Not until I figure out the best way to handle this. Just keep your mouth shut, understand?”

Trahn swallowed and nodded. “Of course.”

She let go of him and forced a smile. “Thank you for telling me. I won’t forget this kindness.”

“Sure. If, uh, if there’s anything else I can do to help…”

“You’ve done plenty,” Charlotte Ruskin told him.

In fact, he had changed everything.

Jeff Greer knew that Charlotte Ruskin didn’t love him. She was still in love with her husband, and that wasn’t liable to change any time soon. She seemed like one of those ladies who’d cling to the memory of her dead hubby forever, as if they actually believed in soul mates and shit like that.

No, Charlotte had hooked up with him for two reasons: she needed somebody who didn’t mind kicking ass to help her settle the score with Graham Moultrie, and she needed a man to hold her in the night when the loneliness got to be too much.

Greer could accept that just fine because he had his own reasons for being with Charlotte. She was a damned good-looking woman for her age—which was a few years older than him—and he didn’t like Moultrie and was glad to go along with anything that would bust the guy’s chops. Greer had been in the real-estate business himself, before the war, and he had seen too many guys like Moultrie, golden boys whose projects always came in on time and under budget and made money hand over fist. Greer had done all right for himself—well enough to afford a place in this bunker—but he was nowhere near as successful as Moultrie had been, and that just wasn’t fair.

So he was all right with letting Charlotte call the tune. It got him laid, and it meant that sooner or later Moultrie would get what he had coming to him, and those things were just fine and dandy with Jeff Greer.

He hadn’t really expected things to come to a head so quickly, though. He frowned as he propped himself up on an elbow and looked at Charlotte.

“We’re going to do what now?”

“Take over the freight elevator,” she said. She had come out of the shower in her Corridor Two quarters with a towel wrapped around her body and another caught up around her dark red hair. “Moultrie has men guarding it, but we can deal with that. You can run it, can’t you?”

“A moron could run a freight elevator, or any other kind,” Greer said. “There’s a hatch at the top of the shaft, though, isn’t there?”

“It’s controlled from down here. We can get someone to open it.”

“You seem mighty sure about that.”

“I am.”

Greer frowned. “That still doesn’t explain why. I mean… there’s nothing up there on the surface I want.”

“There’s something I want,” Charlotte said as she unwound the towel and resumed drying her hair. “You’ve heard the rumors about there being survivors from the war?”

“Sure. Everybody’s heard them. But there’s no proof—”

“Yes, there is. And Moultrie and his bunch of goons have been in contact with at least one of them.” She paused. “Don’t get upset about this, Jeff, but my husband is still alive.”

He sat up sharply in the bed. “What! You mean… Nelson?”

“He’s the only husband I have,” Charlotte said with a smile.

“But he didn’t get into the bunker.”

“That’s why he’s up on the surface. But he’s alive. I’ve talked to someone from Moultrie’s staff who actually saw him just outside the blast doors. There’s no telling how many other people are still up there, starving and trying to survive any way they can. They need help.”

“Well, yeah, but…” Greer’s brain struggled to process what she had told him. The light dawned on him, and he said, “You want to go up and get them, don’t you?”

“Moultrie didn’t have any right to lock them out in the first place. You know what he’s like, Jeff. He’s a little tin-plated dictator who enjoys playing God.”

“Yeah, that’s true. I can’t stand the guy. But this? This kind of changes everything, doesn’t it?”

She came to the bed and sat down beside him. “It doesn’t have to.”

“Sure it does. If you get your husband back, that’s pretty much the end for you and me, isn’t it? You won’t need me anymore.”