William Johnstone - The Doomsday Bunker

“That’s how you can help me the most right now.”

Trevor looked like he wanted to argue more, but after a second he shrugged and nodded. “All right. I understand.”

“That guy Earl who came back with me, he’s been living up there. He can explain to Moultrie how things are, if we can get him to listen. And then we can ask for volunteers to come with us. None of that ‘list’ bullcrap. Nobody should be kicked out if they don’t want to go.”

“You’ll never get Moultrie to go along with that,” Jill warned. “He’s using this as an excuse to get rid of people he thinks may give him trouble, either now or in the future. That’s why you and I were on the list, Dad. He knows we won’t stand for him hurting anybody.”

For a moment, there was a bitter, sour taste under Larkin’s tongue. He had stood for Moultrie murdering those people, because he’d considered it a time of war. The survivors had wanted to break into the project and slaughter anybody they could. That was war, damn it, and Larkin would never lose a second of sleep over the men he had killed in combat.

But what Moultrie had done was over the line, and Larkin could see now that was just the first step in the man’s descent into madness.

He remembered reading Conrad’s Heart of Darkness many years earlier, and he had seen Apocalypse Now , as well. He was murmuring, “The horror,” when someone knocked on the door.

Everyone in the room stiffened. Larkin swung his rifle toward the door. Trevor picked up a semi-automatic pistol from a table. Larkin motioned for him to stay beside Jill and Susan and told Bailey and Chris, “You kids go back in the bedroom.”

Crandall had been standing guard in the corridor and Larkin hadn’t heard any shots, so he figured the man from the surface was the one who’d knocked on the door. But he didn’t take any chances, holding the rifle ready as he went to the door and swung it open.

“You got company,” Crandall said. He stood there alertly with the deer rifle in his hands as he leaned his head toward the woman who was next to him.

Deb Moultrie.

“Deb,” Larkin said. “What the hell—”

“Graham sent me to talk to you, Patrick,” she said. “Can I… come in?”

“We can talk out here,” Larkin said, his voice curt. He stepped into the corridor and swung the door closed behind him. “What does he want?”

“He’s hoping you can put an end to the trouble.”

“Funny. I was hoping the same thing about him. I was gone less than twelve hours, Deb. What happened down here in that time?”

Her face was pale and drawn into tight lines under the red hair, which was pulled back at the moment and fastened into a ponytail that hung halfway down her back. In a plain shirt and jeans, she didn’t look like a fashion model anymore. She said, “Graham was trying to postpone this confrontation for as long as possible, but someone—probably one of the workers in the commissary—found out about the supply situation and leaked the information to Chad Holdstock.”

“Then it’s true?” Larkin asked tautly. “The food is running low?”

“Dangerously low. I… I knew there might be a problem, but even I didn’t know how bad it really was…” Deb took a deep breath. “Graham wasn’t cutting corners, Patrick. I swear he wasn’t. He just didn’t have time to get as ready for the disaster as he led everyone to believe.”

“Because that would have meant he’d failed, and he didn’t want to admit that.”

“I don’t know what he thought, and anyway, it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

Larkin shrugged. “I guess what’s important is that folks are going to start starving to death, unless your husband gets rid of a bunch of them.”

Anger flashed in her eyes as she said, “It’s not like he’s going to line them up against a wall and shoot them!”

“He will if it comes to that,” Larkin said with utter conviction that he was right about Graham Moultrie. He thought about Jim Huddleston and added, “He’s probably got enough guys backing his play to make that happen, too.”

Deb shook her head, but Larkin could tell that she wasn’t completely convinced she was right about what her husband would or wouldn’t do. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, the fear that Larkin was right lurked within her.

“So what does Graham want from me?” Larkin went on. “Why did he send you here?”

“To ask you to come and talk to him. He knows you have a lot of friends here. He wants to convince you that he’s only doing what’s necessary, so that you can make everybody else understand.”

Larkin snorted in disbelief. “I’m not going to do his dirty work for him.”

“You can make people see that they need to negotiate, though, instead of trying to kill each other.”

Was that really worth a try? Larkin was dubious, but he supposed anything that might prevent more bloodshed shouldn’t be ruled out.

“All right,” he said, “but you’re coming with me. Your husband’s bunch won’t start shooting if you’re in the line of fire.”

“He doesn’t have a bunch ,” Deb snapped. “We’re all still on the same side. We’re all residents of the Hercules Project.”

Larkin wished that were still true, but he couldn’t make himself believe it.

Just like he hoped he was right about how having Deb with him would keep Moultrie’s men from gunning him down.

August 21

Susan tried to talk him out of going to parley with Moultrie. Trevor and Jill both wanted to come along. Larkin just hugged the grandkids, shook hands with Trevor, ruffled Jill’s hair like he had done when she was a little girl, and kissed his wife.

Then he and Deb walked toward the Command Center, with Earl Crandall following and keeping an eye out behind them.

An air of tense, hushed anticipation still hung over the project. Larkin didn’t know what was going on down in the Bullpen, but he would have been willing to bet they were nursing their wounds and trying to figure out a plan for attacking the Command Center. He wanted to head that off if he could.

He had an ace in his hand to play. He knew that conditions on the surface were suitable for human survival, despite the hardships they would encounter. The solution seemed simple enough to him: let anyone who wanted to leave the project do so, giving them enough provisions to hold them for a while. Larkin had a hunch quite a few would choose that option. Then the ones left behind would have enough supplies to hold out for a few more months.

Maybe by then, the ones who had left would have a settlement established somewhere west of here. They could come back for the others and lead them to their new home…

Larkin was getting ahead of himself and knew it, so he shut down that line of thought. Stopping the killing here today, that was the main thing.

The three of them went through the doors at the end of the corridor and turned toward the Command Center entrance. Several guards in red vests were posted there. Instantly, they tensed and lifted their weapons.

“Hold your fire,” Deb called. “I’ve brought Patrick Larkin to talk, just like Graham wanted. Let him know we’re here.”

“That’s one of those mutant survivors from the surface with him, Mrs. Moultrie,” a guard said. “We can’t risk—”

“What the hell is it with you people and mutants?” Larkin interrupted. “This is a friend of mine, Earl Crandall. He’s as human as you or me, and he knows about conditions on the surface. I do, too. I’ve been up there, damn it. Bring Moultrie out here and I’ll tell him about it.”

One of the guards spoke low-voiced into his walkie-talkie. He listened to the squawking response, then said, “Graham says we’re to bring you in.”