William Johnstone - The Doomsday Bunker

Jill, on the other hand, never left the house without her Walther, or her Baby Glock, or her S&W Shield…

“Let’s just head home,” she said. “I’ll call my mom on the way and let her know we’ll be there. I can shower and change pretty quickly.”

“Okay.”

Jill packed her gear away in the range bag and led the way out through the pair of doors, one closing before the other opened. She smiled at the guy behind the gun shop’s counter and said, “Since when do you let non-shooters back on the range, Ed?”

“Since you were the only one back there and the guy’s married to you, I figured it would be all right.”

“Yeah, it is,” Jill said. “Just kidding.”

“I’m just glad she didn’t shoot me,” Trevor said.

“Not a joke to make here,” she told him solemnly.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

Jill and Trevor lived about five miles from her parents, both homes being on the west side of Fort Worth but in different suburbs. When her dad retired from the Marines and they made plans to move to the area, Jill hadn’t been sure she liked the idea of having her folks so close by. She didn’t want to fall into the trap of using grandparents as built-in babysitters, as so many people did, and she didn’t want them judging her, either.

As it turned out, though, things had been good. Her parents had given them plenty of space, although everyone was close enough that it was easy to pitch in and help out whenever needed, not just with babysitting but with anything else that came up. And with modern life the way it was, something always came up. If the day-to-day stress level ever went down too much, Jill wasn’t sure she would know what to do.

Trevor parked his hybrid sedan in the driveway of the Larkin home. Looking presentable again, Jill got out and went up the walk with her husband. Her mother must have been waiting for them, beause she opened the door before they got there.

“Come on in,” Susan said. “Dinner’s almost ready. Your father made meatloaf.”

Jill smiled. “I never would have thought Dad would turn out to be a cook.”

“It shocked me, too, to be honest.”

From behind the island that separated the kitchen from the living room and dining room area, Larkin raised a bottle and called, “Want a beer, Trev?”

“Sure,” Trevor said as he walked into the kitchen. Larkin got a beer from the refrigerator, opened it, and handed the bottle to him.

Susan and Jill sat down on the sofa. The TV was on, with the sound down. Susan turned it off and said, “There’s no point. All the news is bad these days.”

“I expect people have been saying that as long as there’s been any sort of news being reported.”

“Probably,” Susan replied with a shrug. “I appreciate the two of you coming over on such short notice.”

Jill looked back and forth between her parents and said, “This isn’t about bad news, is it? Because if it is, I’d just as soon not postpone it until after we’ve eaten.”

“No, not bad news. Although, in a way…”

“Neither one of you is dying from some kind of disease, right?”

Susan looked surprised by that blunt question. “No. Not that I know of, anyway. Why in the world would you ask that?”

“And you’re not getting divorced?”

“What? No! Certainly not.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Larkin said from the kitchen. “Although if that’s what it was, I would have hoped that you’d tell me first.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Susan said.

“And I don’t have cancer?” Larkin asked.

“How would I know that? You haven’t even been to the doctor in months.”

“Wives know things,” Larkin said with exaggerated gravity.

“Stop that,” Susan said. “You know good and well why we asked Jill and Trevor to come over here.”

“Well, yeah, I guess I do,” Larkin admitted.

“It was your idea.”

“No, it was Adam’s idea.”

“Wait a minute,” Jill said. “I’m confused. Your friend Adam Threadgill? What’s he got to do with anything?”

“He’s the one who told me about this place.”

“Oh, man,” Trevor said after he took a pull on his beer. “This isn’t some timeshare deal, is it?”

“No,” Larkin said. “It’s more of an… end of the world deal.”

After that cryptic statement, of course, there was no way Jill and Trevor were going to wait to hear what this get-together was all about. Dinner was ready, though, so they ate as they talked, and pending apocalypse didn’t make for the most appropriate conversation.

“Don’t you think the whole thing is really… far-fetched?” Trevor asked when Larkin had laid out the facts about the Hercules Project. “I mean, I can understand being worried about some of the things going on in the world, but you don’t actually believe anything really bad is going to happen, do you?”

“I can’t guarantee that it’s not going to, either,” Larkin said.

“And you can’t guarantee that the sun’s not going to go nova tomorrow, either.”

“Actually,” Jill said, “there aren’t any signs to indicate that the sun will go nova in the next billion years or so.”

“And if it does, even a place like Moultrie’s got out there won’t do any good,” Larkin added, “so that’s one thing I’m not worried about.”

Trevor tapped the brochure that was lying on the table next to his plate and said, “Okay, given that the world is a dangerous place these days—”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Jill said.

Trevor ignored the interruption and went on, “How do you know this… refuge or whatever you want to call it… will offer any real protection?”

“We’ve both gone out there and taken a look at it,” Larkin said. “I’ve been there twice.”

“And you’ve seen what the owner wants you to see and listened to what he wants to tell you.”

Larkin inclined his head in acknowledgment of his son-in-law’s point. Trevor was a smart guy, a likable guy. Larkin had gone through a little of the usual dad’s feeling that nobody was good enough for his daughter, but logically, he knew that Trevor was. The two of them were a fine match.

“Yeah, but I took a good look around and asked a lot of questions. Maybe you two should go out there and do the same thing.”

“And the cost of it…” Trevor said.

“Yeah, it is pretty expensive,” Jill added.

“True. But you don’t have to pay the whole thing up front, and if you needed it, we thought we could maybe help you out with the down payment.”

“Oh, no,” Trevor said instantly. “We couldn’t do that.”

“Why not?” Larkin asked. “We’ve never loaned you a dime. There’s not many people our age who can say that about their kids.”

Jill made decent, but not spectacular, money as a pharmacist. Trevor made decent, but not spectacular, money working for a computer consulting company. Together, their incomes had allowed them to live comfortable lives, although in recent years it had become more of a challenge because of constantly rising taxes and the cost of everything else going up as well. Still, Larkin figured they were doing all right. But probably not all right enough to come up with the chunk of money the Hercules Project would require.

“We have the money,” Susan said. “Helping you out wouldn’t be a hardship. Well, not enough of one to worry about, anyway.”

Jill looked at her mother and said, “What do you really think about all this, Mom? You’re the most level-headed person I know.”

“Hey,” Larkin said.

“You’re level-headed most of the time, Dad, but we all know you can go off on a tangent now and then.”