Jacqueline Druga - Protocol One

Our people moved toward the bunker.

The guard put his hand on my back, then pointed. But I waited. I waited until I saw Tony was close enough before I walked over.

Half way there, I noticed a light. It was orange and it lit the passage way. Probably a lantern, because it didn’t have the whiteness of artificial light. I would have assumed it was emergency lighting of some kind.

The guard took the blanket from me, then dusted off some of the ash from my body and I stepped inside and set Joie down.

“I want Daddy.” She ran to the entrance.

“Stay here. He’s coming.” I pointed then looked around.

From what I could see of the interior, it looked like a big garage with concrete walls all around. A single camping lantern sat on the floor. It only illuminated a short distance. There were unlit emergency lights all around.

Craig began to open his medical box, taking things out that he would need. He took the single unused blanket and laid it on the floor. “I’ll check the baby, after I check Jackson. I need water. Does anyone have water?”

The one guard handed him a canteen and Craig stood up to make way for Tony who carried Jackson. “Place him here,” Craig said.

Tony laid him down and I immediately raced over. My son looked bad. His skin was pale. “Is he breathing?” I asked Craig, my hands smoothing over his face. I just wanted to hold him, he was still my child, no matter how old he was.

Craig lowered the stethoscope. “Yeah. I need some room. I’m sorry.”

I understood. I was hovering and I inched back.

“Where are the lights?” Tony asked. “Why are there no lights? What happened? Did something go wrong?”

The guard removed his hood. “No, Boss. Not that we know of.”

“Did our engineer not make it?” Tony quizzed.

Another man stepped forward. He wasn’t in any protective gear and emerged from the shadows. He was a man in his late twenties, early thirties, and he wore a baseball cap. “That would be me. I’m Tom. Everything is below. Batteries are still encased so we couldn’t fire up any flashlights.”

Tony tossed up his hands. “Why not? We need to get these people below. We have a sick baby and an injured man. We have to get them to the medical setup.”

Tony was right. Why were we in a concrete hallway? I watched as Skyler tried to get Jackson to take water and Craig prepared an IV line.

“I’m on my last bag here,” Craig said. “I know we have some below.”

“That’s not the problem,” Tom said. “If we take them down, we take them down into a black pit. We had to wait for you to power up. We got the order to button the hatch. That locked it down as we powered down. This was the location with the fail safe. Because of its location being where it is and the general ability that people would have to find it, we installed the fail safe so the bunker would be useless if Anna Jenner wasn’t here.”

I moved forward. “I’m here. I’m Anna.”

“She’s here. Power up.” Tony instructed. “I don’t understand how identifying her would matter.”

“It’s not identifying her,” said Tom. “The fail safe is a lock. A manual combination code over the main door. Only she knows the combination.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know the combination.”

“The Senator picked it himself and said you would know it,” Tom stated.

“Did you think…” Tony said. “To… I don’t know… leave a man down there?”

No one answered.

“I didn’t think so. Ok, let’s unlock that door,” Tony said. “And Tom, you know what to do once we have it open.”

“Main room is first level; I’ll fire up the generators and get the power on.”

“You ready?” Tony asked me.

I sighed out and looked over to Jackson. “I hate to leave him.”

“It won’t take long,” Tom told me. “Really, you can come right back up.”

I nodded and held up my hand, then walked over to Jackson and crouched down. “Hey, sweetie. I have to go. I’ll be right back.”

Craig looked at me. “He’s pretty weak. I think… I think we may have some hemorrhaging. That explains him being out of it. I know we have rough surgical capabilities downstairs, but I need you to be aware. In case… in case I have to operate.”

“How… how did this happen? He was fine.”

“The injury was worse than we thought. It’s so hard to tell without an x-ray or scan.”

“He’s gonna make it, right? He’s okay; it’s just a head injury.”

Craig laid his hand over mind. “Anna, I don’t know. I really don’t. I won’t know until I get him downstairs and for that to happen, you have to get these lights on.”

“Mom…” Jackson called out weakly.

I gasped in happiness and shock, and clutched my child’s hand. “I’m here.”

Jackson tried with diligence to open his eye fully. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. It’s okay.” I leaned forward and kissed him. “You don’t need to apologize. Just get better for me.” I kissed him again. “I love you.”

“I… I love you.”

Exhaling, I smiled in relief and my eyes met Craig’s. “He’s conscious. That’s a good sign, right?”

Craig closed his eyes for a second. “It’s a good sign.”

“Thank you.” The feeling of dread and concern over Jackson was replaced with some optimism. My son had opened his eyes, spoken and said he loved me. The best way to help him was to get those lights on.

I stood and finally looked around at everyone. They were waiting, watching, doing nothing much else. What could they do?

Tony had lifted Joie and embraced her.

Nelly took her hand, and brought the child into the folds of her protective arms.

“I’m ready,” I said.

Tom then announced. “We have to be careful. It’ll be dark.”

“Let me guess,” Tony quipped.”You only brought up one lantern.”

“My phone.” I reached down to my bag. “We can use it as light. It works, remember? And…” from my bag, I pulled a candle.

“You have a candle in your purse?” Tony asked.

“I have several. I grabbed them from the rations we left behind. I don’t have a light though.”

One of the guards commented. “We have like ten thousand down stairs.” Then mumbled. “Lot of good it does us.”

The smoker. Nelly. I knew she had a light. I no sooner faced her then she was pulling out a small box of matches from her smoker’s paradise handbag.

“Here,” she said. “I didn’t bring a lighter. They don’t last.”

“Thank you.” I clutched the matches. I glanced one more time to Jackson, said a short prayer in my mind that he’d be all right, then I walked toward the interior bunker door.

To me, at that moment, that door was our last hurdle and then we’d be safe. I was sure of it.

The guards sealed the blast doors to the bunker to keep the ash from blowing into the bay. It was time to get the lights turned on.

Tom led the way and reached for the door. “We’ll have to go through this, down a short corridor and then down some stairs. That’s the door you need to open.”

I understood. Tony was behind me and before we went through, I said to him. “I just want to thank you for carrying my son.”

“You already did.”

“Well, I’m thanking you again because I don’t remember.”

It was already darker by that door, when the three of us arrived. When Tom pushed on the metal door, it looked liked he pushed into a black wall.

I handed Tony the candle and reached for the matches.

“Don’t drop any,” Tony said. “I know we have ten thousand, but if this doesn’t work and this place doesn’t light up, we’re gonna be using an awful lot of them.”