The Dark Descent

by William Oday

  He raised his hands. “Mr. President! It’s me, McKenzie! You can trust me, sir!”

  CHOICES:

  1. Should I believe what Agent Barrow said and make a run for it?

  2. Should I believe what Agent Barrow said and shoot Agent McKenzie to neutralize the threat, and then make a run for it?

  3. Should I believe Agent McKenzie and go with him?

  The group chose #3 and this is what happened next…

  5

  Trust?

  How could I trust anyone when I couldn’t first trust myself?

  Despite the wind gusting through the exposed interior, despite the hammering in my ears, despite a dozen other distractions blurring by, my hand didn’t waver.

  It held the pistol locked in place. A focal point in the surrounding chaos. Like the north star with the heavens wheeling round painting arcs in the night sky.

  The world circled the stationary muzzle. One pull of the trigger and McKenzie would begin his journey back to the space dust from which we all arose and inevitably returned.

  His right hand inched toward the inside of his dark coat.

  Toward a gun hidden there?

  “Don’t move!” I shouted again.

  A distant explosion and the floor trembled.

  His left hand remained up and open. “We don’t have time for this! It’s me, McKenzie!”

  “Should I know that name?”

  He gave me an odd look. The right hand inched deeper into the interior of the coat. “You’ve sustained a concussion from the blast. We need to get you to safety, sir.”

  “What are you reaching for?” I asked as my finger tightened around the trigger that I somehow knew would resist with five pounds of force before breaking and slamming a firing pin into the primer of a nine millimeter round of ammo.

  “Don’t fire, sir!”

  “What are you reaching for?” I shouted, louder as the point of decision rushed closer.

  His hand flashed out of the coat.

  My finger curled inward. In less than a second, in the space between time, it applied one, two, three, four pounds of pressure.

  And stopped.

  The thing in McKenzie’s hand flopped open.

  A security badge.

  “Look!” he shouted as he held it out. “It’s me! I’ve proudly worked for you every day since the moment you took office. I’d give my life for you or Hannah without a second thought.”

  My finger eased off the smooth curve of hard metal. He believed what he said. At least, I believed that he did.

  Hannah.

  He knew her.

  The ceiling above creaked. A tearing, ripping hellish sound.

  McKenzie jumped at me. He grabbed my arm as the pistol dug into his chest. “Either shoot me or let me get you to safety.”

  The ceiling groaned and a chunk of plaster and lumber large enough to fell an elephant crashed down.

  We dove to the side and were up an instant later and headed for the corridor Barrow had indicated earlier.

  We came upon a set of stairs going down and another going up. McKenzie didn’t hesitate as he herded me toward the one going down. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a mini flashlight. He clicked it on and cast a crisp circle of light into the growing darkness of the descending steps.

  After passing three landings and four sets of stairs, we entered a series of corridors and reinforced doorways that no longer had doors. Scorch marks from whatever had blasted them off scarred the nearby walls.

  The further we went, the more I noticed the dust. The neglect. The eerie feeling of entering a space not used in a long while.

  Like being the first explorer to step inside an ancient and forgotten temple. One whose worshippers had carved strange symbols into stone pillars before their beliefs and practices vanished into the distance of time.

  “Come on!” McKenzie said as we made a sharp right turn into a small room. His flashlight swept over the scene.

  A cramped kitchen occupied one corner. Dust so thick it looked like a drab coat of paint covered a refrigerator and stove and kitchen sink. A short bank of cabinets with doors open and interiors empty. A round dining table on the floor missing all four legs. A sofa occupied the other half of the room. Shredded like it had lost a fight with a chainsaw. Tattered and faded where cloth remained.

  The musty smell of stale air.

  “Come on!” McKenzie said as he guided me through to the door on the far wall. He yanked the handle down and it broke free in his hand. He tossed it aside with a curse. An instant later, he had a large pocket knife unfolded and jammed into the hole.

  Something clicked and he turned the blade.

  The door opened with an audible whoosh. Hinges squealed in protest.

  A tiny shift in air pressure registered in my inner ear. The one not clogged with blood.

  McKenzie pulled me inside and shut the door behind us. “This has to be it,” he said to himself as much as me.

  The flashlight bounced light around revealing that we’d stepped into a…

  a…

  janitor’s closet?

  Plastic bottles with stickers peeling away lined metal shelves. Red, green, blue. Some clear with colored solutions inside. Cleaning supplies.

  Shrink-wrapped bundles of toilet paper filled the shelf in the corner. The faded picture on the plastic still visible. A family of happy cartoon bears holding a roll of toilet paper like it was the best Christmas present in the world. The brand wasn’t one I recognized.

  Not a surprise considering my condition.

  The closet was larger than expected. Easily equal to the room connected to it.

  McKenzie turned to me. “Okay, your turn.”

  My eyebrows crinkled up in confusion. “My turn for what?” I didn’t look at it, but I was keenly aware of the blade in his hand all the same. My fingers tightened around the grip of the pistol, ready to use it if needed.

  “We can’t go anywhere without your bioscan. Do you remember where the input is?”

  I shook my head, looking around in confusion. None of this looked familiar.

  A sudden wave of dizziness hit and I reached an arm out for balance.

  McKenzie grabbed my elbow to steady me.

  The feeling passed as quickly as it came.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  He let go. “Look, we can’t use the main entrance. It’s this or nothing. And I’ve never been down here before.”

  I scanned the interior, looking for something… anything. A large electrical panel on the back wall. A flash of recognition ignited. Not quite a memory, but something.

  “There!”

  McKenzie hurried over and snatched the panel door open.

  Circuit breakers.

  The electrical heart for the rooms on this level.

  In other words, nothing.

  He shrugged. “Any other ideas?”

  I stepped around him and approached the panel.

  The columns of black switches looked like any ordinary panel. White labels with block letters had the names for what each circuit powered.

  BASEMENT

  N CORRIDOR

  BASEMENT KITCHEN

  BASEMENT LOUNGE

  S CORRIDOR

  SUPPLY CLOSET

  My body cast the lower half of the panel into shadow.

  “More light,” I said.

  “Sorry,” he said as he shifted it into a better position.

  I slid my finger down over more labels.

  There!

  HANNAH’S SECRIT PLAYHOUSE

  Written with pencil in sloppy handwriting.

  With secret misspelled.

  Without thinking, I flipped the breaker from ON to OFF.

  Nothing.

  I switched it back to ON.

  Something inside the wall clicked.

  With a whir, the panel slid down into a recess.

  An illuminated screen cast off a gently pulsing blue glow. A blue outline of a head
appeared with a hand-shaped outline next to it.

  A synthesized female’s voice spoke. “Please confirm identity.”

  I glanced at McKenzie, still unsure about him as much as this latest development.

  He nodded toward the screen.

  I switched the pistol to my left hand and turned my body to keep McKenzie in view. I raised my right hand with the palm forward and fingers splayed to match the outline on the screen. I moved to touch the screen but stopped abruptly six inches away.

  3D shapes comprised of countless tiny blue dots appeared on the screen. Fingers. Then the palm appeared down to the wrist.

  A scanned and digitized reflection of my hand.

  I made a fist and the copy did the same. I opened it and adjusted the alignment until the computerized representation fit within the blue outline.

  “Awaiting facial identification,” the pleasant voice said.

  “We need to speed it up, sir!”

  Moving my face closer to the screen was going to put McKenzie out of my peripheral vision. And that meant offering an opening to a potential enemy. Not something I was about to do.

  “Come over to the side. I need more light.”

  With the blue glow emanating from the screen, it was a weak excuse.

  He moved without hesitation, bringing the flashlight around to better illuminate an area that didn’t need it. I noticed his other hand no longer held the knife.

  “Thanks,” I said in a cordial tone, intentionally playing it like we were friends.

  Maybe we were.

  And if we weren’t, it didn’t hurt to let him think I thought that. The ruse might offer a split second advantage. An advantage I might end up needing.

  I leaned in toward the screen and a digitized version of my face appeared. A square chin holding up a wide mouth. Hollowed cheeks emphasized by prominent jaw muscles. The line of the nose slightly bent hinting that it had likely been broken at some point. Deep set eyes beneath a strong brow.

  It was me.

  And yet it was like staring into a mirror and seeing someone else’s reflection.

  The digital representations of the face and hand blinked green.

  “Scan complete. Welcome to the Political Emergency Operations Bunker, Mr. Vice-President.”

  Vice-President?

  I turned to McKenzie with a questioning look.

  He nodded. “There’s a small but powerful faction that has managed to block a system update.”

  The security images dissolved and ten horizontal bars appeared. Each with a number and name. All except one.

  1 - SECURITY

  2 - RESIDENCE 1

  3 - ADMINISTRATION

  4 - SYSTEMS

  5 - INFIRMARY

  6 - RECREATION

  7 - FARMS

  8 - RESIDENCE 2

  9 - WATER AND POWER

  10

  The disembodied voice prompted me after apparently deciding I’d taken too long. “Please choose your desired destination.”

  “We need to get to you down to the Infirmary level.”

  I scanned all the levels and a couple of things jumped out.

  One was that the bottom level had no name like the others. And two was that the two residence levels were pretty far apart.

  “Why are the two residence levels so far apart?”

  McKenzie frowned. “You don’t remember any of this?”

  I shook my head.

  “Rank,” he replied. “The bunker was designed to hold the entire White House staff, both branches of Congress and their families and all necessary support personnel indefinitely. It’s a doomsday bunker the size of a small town, essentially. Residence One is close to security and administration and assigned to higher ranking people and their families. Residence Two is assigned to the workers that keep the bunker running.”

  “How large are the floors?”

  “Massive. It was built back in twenty-ten. They dug up the North Lawn and passed it off as improvements to the air conditioning and electrical systems. The floors completely encompass the areas of the North Lawn, the White House and most of the South Lawn.”

  I had no clear picture of what that meant, but it clearly impressed McKenzie.

  “Please choose your desired destination.”

  How could a voice so vaguely pleasant be so specifically irritating?

  “There’s a trauma team waiting. You’re banged up pretty bad, sir. And we need you now more than ever.”

  “Okay.” I pushed the blue bar indicating the Infirmary level.

  Nothing happened.

  I pushed it again.

  “You say it, sir. There’s a voice scan for security verification.”

  Nothing like a subordinate trying not to treat you like an idiot to make you feel like a complete idiot.

  “Oh, yeah. Right. Take us to the Infirmary.”

  I waited for a hidden door to slide open somewhere. For a section of the wall to part and reveal an elevator.

  A muffled whooshing sound and the whole closet started descending. No objects in the room moved, but the difference registered in my inner ear. The subtle change in pressure and balance.

  “You’ll be safe now, Mr. President.”

  I nodded, not necessarily in agreement though.

  “Sir, can I have my pistol back?”

  I glanced at it in my left hand.

  We were heading down to apparent safety.

  The security system had recognized me as the Vice-President.

  McKenzie hadn’t done anything overtly strange to arouse my suspicions. At least, not if Agent Barrow had been, in fact, an enemy.

  And I’d sustained a head injury. Something serious enough to cause memory loss. I barely remembered anything beyond my own name.

  Asking for the gun was a reasonable request by someone dedicated to keeping me alive.

  As the president, did I need to personally carry a firearm? Wasn’t that tactical level of security better handled by others?

  The president’s job was to focus on the strategic issues. The big picture problems that ensured future survival and prosperity.

  And there didn’t seem to be a shortage of big problems at the moment.

  I raised the pistol—McKenzie reached for it—and switched it to my dominant right hand.

  “No.”

  6

  Upon exiting the elevator to the Infirmary level, we encountered a Doctor Tanaka waiting with a wheelchair which he encouraged me to use. I refused and we set off to the trauma wing. Tanaka observed me in silence while McKenzie ran a gauntlet between us and the numerous people we passed.

  No one in the corridors spoke to me, but I noticed their furtive looks.

  Maybe because I was the president and they’d had no reason important enough to require my time.

  Or maybe something else.

  We arrived in a patient room and the examination got underway.

  Doctor Tanaka moved the pen light from side to side in front of my right eye. “Try to track the movement, Mr. President.”

  “I am,” I said with frustration coloring my voice.

  The light stopped moving. “Let’s try the other eye.”

  I switched hands and the light began moving from side to side again. “Hmmm, okay,” Tanaka said as the light clicked off.

  A nurse walked into the exam room with a folded hospital gown in his hands. He placed it on the bedside table and then plugged a syringe into the port of the blood bag hanging from the mobile unit beside the bed. After the contents were emptied, he stole a glance at me before hurrying out.

  “What did he just do?”

  “What?” Tanaka said while scrawling onto a clipboard.

  “That nurse. He just put something into the blood bag.”

  Tanaka turned to McKenzie standing at the foot of the bed and then back to me. “A masking agent to ensure your system doesn’t reject the donor blood.”

  I traced the tube from the blood bag to the IV port in the crook of my elbow.
Whatever it was would be in my veins in short order.

  Tanaka returned to scribbling notes.

  I shifted forward to see what he was writing, but he flipped a page down to cover them.

  “Mr. President, you’ve lost a lot of blood. It’ll take some time but we’ll get you replenished. Of greater concern is the impact to your head. Memory loss. Paranoia. Have you experienced any bouts of dizziness?”

  I had. A little when I first woke up. And again in the supply closet elevator.

  “Yeah.”

  “All indicators for cerebral edema. Swelling of the brain.” He glanced at the pistol resting on my lap. “We need to do an MRI to know for certain. If there is swelling, we need to know how much. It could be nothing to worry about or it could be a life-threatening condition.”

  “Okay.” I was fine with getting more information. That was all I wanted.

  Tanaka clicked his pen. “Good. You’re going to need to change into the medical gown. And the gun isn’t allowed inside the scanner.”

  My fingers involuntarily tightened around the grip. “I’m keeping it.”

  “Mr. President, the metal will cause problems for the magnetic resonance imaging.”

  “You need to look at my brain, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then I’ll hold it down by my side. Will that be in the way?”

  Tanaka’s glasses slipped down his nose and he pushed them back up into place. “This is all very irregular. We need the clearest images possible in order—”

  “Can you get a picture of my brain like that or not?”

  Tanaka glanced at McKenzie.

  “Why are you looking at him? I asked you a question. I want an answer.”

  Tanaka gulped and returned his gaze to the clipboard. He lifted the cover page and scratched a note. “I’m concerned about the magnetic fields heating up and igniting the primers in the bullets.”

  “I’ll take that chance.”

  Tanaka let out a long sigh. “Fine. Yes. It should work well enough to get a clear image of your brain and skull.”

  “Good.” I started unbuttoning my shirt, taking care to leave the pistol on the bed within easy reach.

  “Agent McKenzie and I will leave you to change,” Tanaka said as he turned for the door.