S. Bodeen: The Compound

T. S. ELIOT WAS WRONG. MY WORLD ENDED WITH A BANG the minute we entered the Compound and that silver door closed behind us.

The sound was brutal.

Final.

An echoing, resounding boom that slashed my nine-year-old heart in two. My fists beat on the door. I bawled. The screaming left me hoarse and my feet hurt.

Through my tears, the bear and elk on my father’s shirt swam together. Beneath the chamois, Dad’s chest heaved. The previous forty minutes had left us out of breath. Finally my gaze focused and went beyond him, searching. I gulped down a painful sob.

Had everyone made it?

Farther down the corridor I saw my weeping mother, dressed in a burgundy robe, dark tendrils dangling from her once-careful braid. Mom clutched my six-year-old sister, Terese, a sobbing pigtailed lump in pink flowered flannel. From one small hand dangled her beloved Winnie the Pooh.

Behind them stomped my eleven-year-old sister, Lexie, dark hair mussed, arms crossed over the front of her blue silk pajamas. Not being brother-of-the-year material, I almost didn’t care if she made it or not.

But my grandmother wasn’t in sight.

“Where’s Gram?” I shouted.

Dad patted my head, hard and steady, like I was a dog. He spoke slowly, in the same tone he used to explain to the household help the exact amount of starch he required in his shirts. “Eli, listen to me. There wasn’t enough time. I waited as long as I could. It was imperative I get the rest of you to safety. We had to shut the door before it was too late.”

The door. Always, the door.

Another look. No sign of my twin brother. He was the person I needed the most. Where was he?

My pounding heart suggested I already knew the answer. “Eddy?” His name caught in my throat, stuck tight by the panic rising up from my belly.

Dad whirled around, his tone accusing. “I thought Eddy was with you.”

My head swung from side to side. Between sobs, the words barely eked out. “He went with Gram.”

Dad’s face clouded with indecision. Just for a moment. Had that moment lasted, it might have changed all of our futures. But Dad snapped back into control. “I still have one of you.” With just six words, my childhood ended.

As did the rest of the world.

I knew what happened that night. We had been prepared. Other kids got bedtime stories about fairies and dogs. We fell asleep with visions of weapons of mass destruction dancing in our heads. Every evening, dinner included updates Dad downloaded from the Internet, updates on the U.S. involvement in the Middle East, the status of nuclear weapons programs in places like Iran and North Korea, names of countries that had been added to the list of those with WMDs.

Dad gripped my shoulders and pulled me away from the silver door, twisting me around to follow the rest of my family. What was left of it. I clung to my father’s hand. He rushed ahead of me, his hand dropping mine.

I lifted my hand to my face and it reeked of fuel.

The corridor ended. We paraded through an archway strung with twinkling white lights, then entered an enormous circular room. The place reminded me of a yurt we’d built in school, only about eighty times bigger. The curved walls were made of log beams; the same type that crisscrossed over our heads in an intricate pattern. The roundness of the room was odd yet comforting.

Unlit logs sat in an elaborate stone fireplace, around which luxurious, overstuffed couches, love seats, and armchairs formed an audience. For a few seconds, despite the situation, my nine-year-old mind pondered what wonderful forts could be made with all those cushions.

Mom sat on a green couch and cradled Terese, while Lexie stood beside them, glowering. Dad lit kindling between the logs in the fireplace. The familiar smell of wood smoke wafted toward us, seeming out of place in a setting so distinctly unfamiliar. My father put his hand on my mother’s shoulder. His knuckles were white. He chose that moment to tell my mother and sisters that Gram and Eddy hadn’t made it.

The announcement made it real. Made it final. A verbal execution.

Wails erupted from inside me. Mom and Lexie cried, too.

I ran to my mother. She held me along with Terese. Lexie leaned against Dad, and his arms encircled her.

We stayed that way for a long time, my face crushed to Mom’s bosom. She smelled of lilacs. As I sobbed, she stroked my hair. Like always, Mom’s touch was comforting and warm. Even that night, that heinous night, her touch helped. Our cries sounded over the crackling of the logs. After a long while, sobs faded to sniffs and shudders, waning from fresh grief into leftovers.

Feeling the need to move, I stood up. I wiped my nose with my sleeve, and climbed onto a stool by a large bar with a stainless steel refrigerator behind it.

Dad flicked a switch.

A plasma television dropped down from the ceiling, blank monitor glowing. “I figured we’d be in here a lot.” The blue from the television tinted Dad’s face and blond hair in a garish way. He startled me when he threw his arms out to the side. “Cozy, yes? What do you think?”

“It’s not what I expected.” Mom’s voice was shaky.

Dad rubbed his jaw. “What did you expect?”

I had a pretty good idea what Mom was thinking. In third grade, I gave an oral report on nuclear war. If you lived in a target area like we did, you had approximately forty minutes after nuclear weapons were launched. Forty minutes to do what? Say good-bye to loved ones, stuff yourself with doughnuts, take a hundred-mile-an-hour joy ride: whatever one did with only forty minutes left to live.

If you were me, the son of Rex Yanakakis, billionaire? Those forty minutes were spent escaping to an underground shelter, built specifically for the Yanakakis family. Here, I would live out the next fifteen years in luxurious comfort while nearly everyone else perished. We hadn’t seen the shelter, only heard Dad talk about it. So I think Mom felt like I did, a little surprised the place actually existed.

“I don’t know.” Mom’s head swayed slightly. The movement caused a tear to drip off the slope of her nose. “At least it’s quiet down here.”

Dad observed her for a moment. Then he switched off the television. “Eli? Lexie? Want to see your rooms?”

Our grave circumstances had not yet sunk in. I was a robot, dazed, simply sliding off the stool to follow my father and my older sister. It felt like a dream. Through a doorway on the opposite side of the room from where we’d entered, we proceeded down a long carpeted hallway similar to the ones in our house in Seattle. Only difference was this one smelled of vanilla and had the constant hum of a generator.

Dad narrated as we walked. “All the walls are reinforced, as we discussed, to keep out radiation. But the concrete is not pleasant to look at, so all the rooms are finished in wallboard or wood. I didn’t want you to feel surrounded by concrete and steel.”

Dad stopped in front of a purple door. Lexie pushed it open and squealed. Leave it to her to cheer up over material possessions. Like something out of an Arabian Nights book, silk tapestries and curtains of bright colors were draped everywhere. A monstrous canopy bed ran the length of one whole wall. There was an exotic, cloying aroma. Incense maybe?