William Johnstone - The Doomsday Bunker

Moultrie looked even more haggard at that news. “Where did they get it?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“It must have come from Chuck Fisher,” Moultrie said with a frown. “Chuck wouldn’t have given it up unless…”

“Oh, hell,” Threadgill said as Moultrie’s voice trailed off. He was thinking the same thing: Fisher wouldn’t have given up his access cards as long as he was alive.

“So Charlotte Ruskin was trying to reach the surface and find her husband,” Moultrie said. “That’s the only thing that makes sense. And now Ruskin and some of those other survivors have made it down here and are attacking the project—”

“That’s right,” a voice came from the doorway. “Your arrogance has caught up with you, Moultrie, and now you’re gonna get what’s coming to you!”

The men at the console turned their heads to look at the entrance, where Nelson Ruskin stood with an AR-15 in his hands and his wife beside him, pointing a pistol at them.

Charlotte stalked forward, being careful to stay out of the line of fire, and said, “You! Trahn! Send the elevator back up.”

“I… I can’t!” Trahn said. “The computer’s still rebooting. I don’t have any control.”

She paused and looked down at Greer’s body. “Jeff…” she said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

Moultrie was standing so that he partially blocked Threadgill from the Ruskins’ view. Threadgill reached deep inside and finally found the strength he needed to move. The intruders either hadn’t noticed him or didn’t realize he was armed. He came up out of the chair and swung his left arm, hitting Moultrie’s upper arm and driving the man aside and down. Threadgill’s gun came up and belched flame.

The AR-15 roared as Nelson Ruskin frenziedly pulled the trigger four times. One bullet went past Threadgill and shattered a monitor behind him, but the other three smashed into his chest. Threadgill’s finger clenched spasmodically on the trigger and his gun went off again. The wild shot struck Charlotte Ruskin just above her left eye and snapped her head back. Her knees buckled. She was dead by the time they hit the floor, and she pitched forward on her face.

“Nooooo!” Nelson Ruskin howled. He tracked the rifle toward Moultrie, jerking the trigger as he swung the weapon. The bullets found Charles Trahn first. Trahn scrambled to get out of the way but was too slow. A couple of slugs tore through his body and exited in sprays of blood. He crumpled to the floor next to Greer and Threadgill, who had also collapsed from his wounds.

Moultrie would have been next. Ruskin charged across the room toward him, eager to kill. But before Ruskin could pull the trigger again, Larkin and Jill rushed into the Command Center and opened fire. Ruskin stumbled forward as the bullets pounded into his back. Great blossoms of blood appeared on his shirt. Some of the slugs bored all the way through and whined around the room, most of their force spent by their lethal passage through Nelson Ruskin’s flesh. The AR-15 slid from Ruskin’s hands and clattered to the floor. He reached out blindly, as if trying to get his hands around Graham Moultrie’s throat, then sank to his knees and rolled onto his side. A crimson pool spread around him.

Larkin kept his gun trained on Ruskin as he told Jill, “Check on Charlotte.”

Only a couple of seconds went by before Jill reported, “She’s dead, Dad.”

“I’m pretty sure Ruskin is, too, but keep an eye on him anyway.”

Having said that, Larkin lowered his gun and hurried to Adam Threadgill’s side. He knelt next to his old friend.

“Damn it, Adam.”

Threadgill’s eyes fluttered open. “P-Patrick…” he managed to say. “You need to watch out… for Ruskin…”

“He’s done for, buddy,” Larkin said quietly. He put a hand on Threadgill’s shoulder and squeezed. “Thanks to you.”

“Nah, I didn’t… but I guess… it doesn’t matter.”

“No,” Larkin said, trying to keep his voice from choking. “It sure doesn’t.”

“What matters… is that you tell Luisa… that I… I love…”

Threadgill didn’t have the strength to go on. Larkin leaned close to him and whispered, “She knows, Adam. She knows. But I’ll tell her for you anyway.”

“Thanks… Patrick… Semper…”

“Fi,” Larkin grated out as Threadgill’s last breath rattled in his throat. Larkin knelt there for a long moment, head down, before he dragged in a deep breath and came to his feet.

Gunfire continued elsewhere in the project. Larkin needed to be there. He looked at Moultrie, who was ashen but apparently unhurt, and said, “You all right, Graham?”

Moultrie nodded. “Thank you, Patrick.”

Larkin turned toward the door and jerked his head at Jill. “Come on, kid. There’s more work to do.”

The computer system finished its reboot approximately fifteen minutes later. All systems came back online, although some of them were glitchy. By that time, the shooting had stopped. All the invaders from the surface were dead: fourteen men and seven women.

So were nine of the Hercules Project’s residents, six members of the security force and three so-called civilians. Those casualties included Chuck Fisher, Adam Threadgill, and Charles Trahn. Two dozen more residents were wounded, some seriously.

Larkin and Jill had come through the fighting without a scratch. Larkin’s heart was full of pain from the death of his old friend, though.

With Fisher’s death, Larkin found himself unofficially heading up the security force, so the report came to him of noises from the elevator shaft. Somebody was banging around up there. Larkin went and listened for himself. He knew right away what was going on.

He found Moultrie in the now up-and-running-again Command Center and told him, “Some of the survivors have managed to climb down the elevator cables and they’re on top of the car now, trying to bust through it with what sounds like shovels and axes.”

“They’re not going to be able to, are they?” Moultrie said. “It’s solid steel. They’d need a torch to cut through it, and even if they happen to have one, we’re not going to give them the chance to do that.”

“What do you think we should do, Patrick?”

Larkin pointed with his thumb and said, “Send the car back up. The hatch is open. They can scramble back out before they get caught. Then we bring it down and close the hatch. We’re back where we started.”

“Only the atmosphere down here has been breached and exposed to the air from up there.”

“I’m sure you’ve checked the radiation readings by now. Just letting some surface air down here hasn’t made them go up, has it?”

Moultrie shook his head. “No, we seem to be safe where that’s concerned. And the scans for any other sort of contaminant have come up negative. The only thing that got down here that’s still dangerous are the bodies of those dead maniacs—and we have an incinerator to deal with those.”

Larkin grimaced. He knew Moultrie was right. Burning the corpses was the best and safest way to dispose of them. It still seemed a little harsh to him, anyway, despite the fact that he himself planned to be cremated if possible when his time came.

Moultrie sighed and said, “I should have taken your advice more seriously, Patrick. You knew that freight elevator was a weak spot in our defenses, and I didn’t shore it up enough. I won’t make that mistake again. I need someone to take Chuck’s place, and I’m hoping you’ll agree to accept the job.”

“As head of security?”

“That’s right.”

The offer didn’t come as a surprise to Larkin. It wasn’t a responsibility he would have ever sought out on his own, but it also wasn’t something he could turn down. Somebody had to do the job, and he was as qualified as anybody else down here. More qualified than most.