William Johnstone - The Doomsday Bunker

“Are you sure about this?”

“They were in my place, talking. They thought I was asleep. I heard them planning the whole thing.”

Fisher wasn’t buying it. “The way you feel about Graham, I’d think you’d be glad to see somebody get rid of him.”

“It’s not Moultrie I’m worried about,” she snapped. “He can go to hell as far as I’m concerned. But if Jeff and his buddies try to do this, innocent people are going to be hurt, maybe even killed. I don’t want that.” She caught her lower lip between her teeth for a second, then added, “And I don’t want to see him hurt, either. Yeah, now that I know Nelson’s alive, I feel bad about being with Jeff… but I may never see Nelson again, and Jeff ’s here.”

Fisher grunted and said, “Love the one you’re with, eh?”

She could have killed him for that, right then and there, but she didn’t have what she needed yet. Instead she kept her voice calm and steady as she said, “Just let me tell you about it, okay?”

Fisher shrugged and stepped back. “Sure, I guess it won’t hurt anything to listen. I’m still not convinced you’re telling me the truth, but maybe you can persuade me.”

“If you just listen to me, you’ll be convinced, all right.”

She walked past him into the small living and dining area. Fisher closed the door behind her. He wore sweatpants and a T-shirt and no shoes, but he didn’t look like he had gotten out of bed to answer her knock. Charlotte spotted a tablet lying on a table next to a chair and figured Fisher had been reading or watching a movie.

Her gaze darted around the rest of the room, coming to rest on a key ring that lay on the counter dividing the kitchen area from the rest of the room. Several small plastic oblongs the size of credit cards were next to the keys. Nobody down here needed credit cards anymore, so she knew that one of them had to be what she was looking for.

Fisher walked past her and asked with grudging courtesy, “Can I get you something to drink?”

He was a big guy, ex-military, able to handle himself. She was no lightweight herself, but she didn’t have the sort of experience that he did. So she knew she couldn’t afford to waste her one chance. She slid the knife out of her jeans pocket, swung her arm around to get up some momentum, and drove the four-inch-long blade into the side of his neck as hard as she could. All the accumulated tension exploded out of her in a yell.

Fisher tried to turn toward her. She caught a glimpse of his eyes bugging out with shock and pain. She still had hold of the knife’s handle. She shoved on it as hard as she could, slicing the keen edge across his throat. Blood spurted out over her hand.

Instinct brought Fisher’s arm up and around. His forearm crashed against Charlotte’s head and knocked her backward, making her lose her grip on the knife. Her back hit the door, bounced off. He came after her and reached out for her with his right hand while his left pawed at his ruined throat. Crimson welled over his fingers and spread down the front of his T-shirt.

Charlotte was half-stunned. She got her arms up and tried to fend off Fisher’s attack, but he rammed into her and drove her back against the door again. This time her head hit it and the impact disoriented her even more. She flailed at him, but he got his hand on her throat and closed it. The pressure of his fingers was incredible.

Fisher twisted, hauled her around with him, fell forward. She landed on her back with him on top of her. She couldn’t breathe because of his choking grip and his weight pressing down on her torso. He had caught her without much air in her lungs. Frantic desperation welled up inside her. A red haze began to creep over her vision.

She felt the hot splash on her face as more blood gouted from Fisher’s throat. He slumped even more heavily on her. His fingers relaxed slightly. Charlotte blinked blood out of her eyes and looked up into his, only a few inches away, as they started to glaze over in death. She clawed at his hand and pulled it away from her throat.

Fisher was a big man. Getting him off her wasn’t easy. But the urgency of needing to breathe again gave her strength. She put her hands on his shoulders and shoved as hard as she could while at the same time arching her back. For a second, Fisher’s deadweight stubbornly resisted her efforts. Then he rolled to Charlotte’s left and wound up on his back next to her, arms slightly outflung, his throat a gory mess.

She pushed herself up on an elbow and lay there gasping for air for more than a minute before her galloping pulse began to slow down. She gathered her strength and struggled to her feet. A few staggering steps brought her to the bathroom. She shuddered as she looked at herself in the mirror.

She resembled something from an old horror movie, with blood splattered on her face and already clotting in her hair. She grabbed a towel from a rack, got it wet in the sink, and started scrubbing desperately. She had come here to kill Chuck Fisher, partly because he was Moultrie’s right-hand man and deserved it, to Charlotte’s way of thinking, but mostly because she knew he would never turn over that access card and she needed it to save her husband. Even though what she had done was justified in her opinion, actually ending the man’s life had shaken her.

But she would kill again if she had to, in order to save Nelson.

Her shirt had a lot of blood on it, too. She pulled it off and dropped it on the bathroom floor. She looked in Fisher’s bedroom and found a sweatshirt in his closet. It was too big, of course, but nobody would pay any attention to that. She pulled it on, and with most of the blood washed off, she didn’t think anyone would notice her.

She didn’t know which of the access cards she needed, so she stuffed all of them in her pocket, along with the ring of keys. Might come in handy, she told herself. She didn’t want to approach Fisher’s body or even look at it, but he had pulled the knife from his throat and it lay beside him. Charlotte came close enough to pick it up and wipe off the blade on his sweatpants. She slipped it back in her pocket as she turned toward the door.

It wouldn’t be much longer now, she told herself. She would be reunited with her husband.

And Graham Moultrie’s reign as dictator of the Hercules Project was about to be over.

Jeff Greer was waiting for her at the east end of Corridor Two, near the entrance to the Command Center. He had argued against her being the one to steal the access card, but Charlotte had been insistent. Fisher wouldn’t have trusted Jeff enough to let him close to him. But Fisher was a Neanderthal and hadn’t given “a mere woman” enough credit for being dangerous, just as Charlotte had predicted.

It was late enough, after midnight, that no one else was around. Moultrie’s imposition of a regular day/night routine wasn’t exactly a curfew, but it was strict enough that for practical purposes it served as one. The Hercules Project never actually slept, but not many people were out and about in the middle of the night.

Greer stepped forward to meet her with a worried frown on his face. “Are you all right?” he asked, then abruptly reached out to take hold of her shoulders. “My God, Charlotte, is that blood on your face?”

“What?” Charlotte was annoyed. She swiped a hand at her face. She had believed she got all the gore off. “It’s not mine,” she went on.

“Fisher’s,” Greer breathed.

Charlotte shrugged, signifying her agreement with what he said and getting his hands off her at the same time. She patted her pocket and said, “I’ve got his access cards.”

“Is he going to—”

“He’s not going to do anything to cause us a problem. Ever again.”