William Johnstone - The Doomsday Bunker

“All right,” he told Moultrie. “I’ll do it.”

“Thanks, Patrick. I’ll rest easier at night, knowing that you’ll be watching over all of us. Now…” Moultrie turned to a keyboard and typed for a few seconds. He took a handheld tablet from his pocket and tapped a couple of icons on its screen. “I’m sending the elevator back up, as you suggested. When it comes back down, you can arrange to post as many guards there as you’d like, around the clock.”

“I don’t know if they’ll try to get down that way again,” Larkin said. “They had to have somebody on the inside helping them to make it this time. If it hadn’t been for Charlotte Ruskin—”

“Someone else down here might decide to turn traitor,” Moultrie broke in. “You’re going to have to be on the lookout for that, too. I’m counting on you, Patrick, to ferret out anyone who might be disloyal to the Hercules Project.”

“Sure,” Larkin said, but even as he spoke, he felt a faint stirring of misgivings. It was easy for such efforts as Moultrie described to turn into a witch hunt. That could do more harm than good.

“And just to make sure those bastards on the surface think twice before they try anything else…” Moultrie did more tapping on the handheld tablet.

“What are you doing now?”

“Closing the hatch,” Moultrie said.

Larkin frowned. “Doesn’t seem like the elevator’s had enough time to get all the way to the top—”

“It hasn’t.”

“But that means—” Larkin’s heart thudded hard in his chest. For a second he couldn’t speak. Then he said, “If the hatch is closed, those people on top of the car won’t have anywhere to go when it gets to the top of the shaft.”

“No, they won’t. But you saw how insane they all were, Patrick. All they wanted to do was slaughter us, like they were some sort of crazed horde.”

“They’re sick and scared—”

“And a danger to the project.” Moultrie set the tablet aside and put a hand on Larkin’s shoulder. “How many of them did you kill, Patrick? Several, I imagine.”

That was different, Larkin thought. That was in battle. It wasn’t tapping an icon on a screen and standing idly by while people were crushed to bloody paste between two unyielding slabs of steel. Larkin could only imagine the stark terror that had gripped those people in the shaft as darkness closed in around them and the elevator car continued grinding upward…

And by now it was probably over, he realized. None of the blood would seep into the sealed elevator car. There would be no signs to haunt the residents of the project. Those poor bastards were gone just as much as the ones chucked into the incinerator soon would be. Gone and forgotten.

But Larkin wasn’t sure he would ever forget the faint, satisfied smile on Graham Moultrie’s face as the man sent those people to their doom.

August 15

Larkin lifted his arm and used his sleeve to wipe sweat from his face as he entered his apartment after a shift on patrol duty, circulating through the project to make sure everything was peaceful. The heat was worse than usual today. It had been like that off and on for several weeks, enough so that people were talking about how it was hotter than it used to be. Some of them speculated that it must be summer on the surface.

Larkin knew that wasn’t the case. Or maybe, technically, it was. But either way, it didn’t matter. With the thick layer of earth, steel, and concrete above them serving as insulation, the climate at the surface would have no effect on conditions inside the Hercules Project.

The situation was worrisome enough that he said something about it to Susan when he found her in the apartment’s small kitchen. She nodded and said solemnly, “I know. And it’s not just the heat, Patrick. We’ve had a big jump in the cases we’re seeing of asthma complications and other breathing problems. The air’s just not as good as it was.”

Larkin knew what she meant. On occasion, he’d found himself having trouble catching his breath, and he knew there wasn’t anything wrong with his lungs. It was almost like there wasn’t enough air in the air.

“You should say something to Graham about it,” Susan went on.

“I don’t know. I’m not a scientist…”

“But you’re the head of security and basically his second-in-command down here. If there’s a problem, he should have told you about it.”

Larkin shook his head. Susan had said that he was Graham Moultrie’s second-in-command, and he knew other people thought of him that way, too. But ever since the attack from the surface led by Nelson Ruskin, Moultrie had changed. He didn’t even pretend to listen to anyone else’s opinion these days. He just gave orders and expected them to be carried out without question. Everything he did was for the good of the project and their continued survival, he claimed, and Larkin supposed that Moultrie actually believed that. But sometimes Larkin wasn’t sure that was all there was to it.

Sometimes it seemed like Moultrie just wanted to shut down anybody who might disagree with him. More than once, Larkin had gotten the impression that Moultrie was keeping things from him, important things.

Like the way the life-support systems in the bunker were working.

Larkin might have mentioned that ill-at-ease feeling to Susan, but at that moment the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt crackled and his daughter’s voice said, “Dad? You there?”

He knew that Jill’s security shift was beginning as his ended, so she was on duty now. She probably wouldn’t be calling him right now if it wasn’t security-related, so he wasted no time unclipping the walkie-talkie and bringing it to his lips.

“I’m here, kid. What’s up?”

“Got a situation brewing down here in the bunker. You mind coming down?”

Larkin cocked an eyebrow. Jill didn’t ask for help very often, so her “situation” had to be something fairly serious.

“I’ll be right there,” he told her, then put the walkie-talkie back on his belt next to the holstered 1911.

“Should I come with you?” Susan asked.

“No, you stay here.”

“She’s my daughter, too, Patrick.” Susan’s tone was a little sharper than usual. “And if it’s trouble, you might need some medical assistance.”

She had a point there, he thought, but at the same time he wasn’t going to put her in harm’s way if it wasn’t necessary.

“I’ll call you if I need you,” he said as he turned toward the door. From the corner of his eye he saw how her features tightened in anger, but he couldn’t do anything about that right now.

Their apartment was on the same level as the lower bunker, so he didn’t have to go “down there,” as Jill had put it, just out the door, through the foyer, and into the huge, open living area. The sound of raised, angry voices drew him immediately toward the other end.

A crowd of close to a hundred people had gathered in front of one of the staircases. A man had gone up several stairs and turned so he could face the others and address them. As Larkin came closer, he recognized Chad Holdstock, who had been Jeff Greer’s friend.

There was no proof that Holdstock had been part of the plan hatched by Greer and Charlotte Ruskin to allow the survivors from the surface to invade the project. Holdstock had denied even knowing what the two of them were plotting, and there was no evidence to say that he was lying. Larkin didn’t trust the guy anyway.

After the bloody attack, the malcontents among the Bullpenners had been pretty quiet. Larkin didn’t expect it to stay that way, though, so he wasn’t surprised when he saw that Holdstock was trying to stir up the crowd.