Above

by Isla Morley

  He points out the nonperishables as though he is the owner of a grocery store and this is my first day on the job. “I can’t promise you fresh produce very often. Besides, the canned stuff is better for you in the long run, what with the government doing those chem-sprays over all our farmlands. Airplane vapor trails, my foot.” He fills a small bowl with canned peaches. “This is a special occasion. What we don’t finish, we’ll put in this cooler, and they’ll last you a good week or so. Once I get that old icebox up and running, you’ll be able to order T-bone steaks if you want.”

  “Why are you doing this, Dobbs?”

  “When I come back, I’ll bring you cold cuts, but just about everything you can think of is here in a tin or a packet or a box. MREs—know what they are? Meals ready to eat. You don’t even need to cook if you don’t want. Give you more time to work on your poems.”

  Poems? He expects sonnets in this hole?

  “If there’s something you want that’s not here, put it on the list.” He gestures to a bulletin board with a small piece of paper pinned to it. Then he stirs a packet of powder into an enamel cup filled with hot water and hands it to me. “Tastes good; try it.”

  I push the cup aside. “Why are you doing this?”

  “I realize you have a lot of questions, and we are going to discuss them, in due course.”

  There are pauses between his words, whereas mine come out in a rush. “Whynotnow?”

  “Because you’re all wound up, and I need for you to be calm. We’ll discuss everything when we can talk, one adult to another.”

  But I’m not an adult. I’m sixteen years old.

  Taking a sip of the hot chocolate meant for me, he watches me over the rim of the mug. I do my best imitation of being calm, so he will talk to me like an adult and tell me what is going to happen next.

  “You weren’t like other girls,” he says instead. “You had your head screwed on right. The first time I saw you in the reference section, I knew. The others: a dime a dozen. But when you came along, I said to myself, ‘Now here’s one who doesn’t buy everything she hears. Here’s one who isn’t brainwashed.’ ” He talks, and I watch the silent movie projected above his head.

  We’re in the library. He’s bringing me a book. Saying something nice. “I’m not a teacher, so you don’t have to keep calling me Mr. Hordin. Why don’t you call me Dobbs.”

  The next frame is Mercy, smacking her lips together, saying it’s creepy for him always to be suggesting I read survivalist books. Mercy, my best friend—why hadn’t I listened to her? Instead, I defended the man. “He’s an Eagle Scout,” I told her. “He thinks we’d all do better if we were properly prepared.”

  “He’s probably one of those conspiracy theorists. Ask him who killed JFK; I bet he’s got an answer.”

  Dobbs had, in fact, mentioned previously that the head of the World Bank was responsible for the assassination, but I wasn’t about to tell Mercy that.

  When Dobbs’s tone starts changing, I look at him. His voice is scary, not at all conversational anymore. He shakes his head at me. “You started changing when that kid showed up again. I wasn’t about to sit by and watch you turn out like the others, what with Arlo Meier zeroing in.”

  “Please, Dobbs. I don’t know what I did wrong. I’ll do whatever you want. I won’t tell anyone about this. Please; please, just let me go.”

  He stops blowing steam from the top of his drink, drains it in one go. Slamming the mug on the table, he says, “I know what you need. You need to get up and walk.”

  And I’m already on my feet, thinking, Yes! Finally, this all comes to an end. He only wanted to set me straight about Arlo, and now it is over.

  Something doesn’t seem quite right, but he is taking the keys off his belt, and sure enough, he unlocks that door and swings it wide.

  A narrow metal staircase rises from the small platform. Up that short flight is the first of the really big doors, which is now propped open. I can’t recall if there were two or three more doors between me and the outside. However many, I can practically smell the outdoors. I’ve always grumbled about summer, about how it can beat the smell out of any living thing; now, I need to smell the open range more than ever.

  Instead of going up, Dobbs gestures to the right. “I believe I promised you a tour.”

  Only now do I notice that we are in some sort of concrete shaft, that to the right of the platform is a staircase that goes down even further. It is this direction Dobbs intends for me to go.

  No, not deeper!

  As fast as I can, I belt up the stairs, my footsteps clanging loudly. I clear the first doorway and enter a small concrete corridor. At the other end is another one of those enormous gray-green doors with thick horizontal bars across it, top to bottom. I race through it, and make a sharp left turn. It’s like passing through a maze. I can feel Dobbs behind me, closing in. “Get back here,” he calls.

  The concrete corridor takes another right-angled turn. I am about to make the next turn when he grabs me around the neck. He drags me down, whistling happily.

  I BOB TO the surface. Where I’d been held under was a dreamless nothingness that suited me just fine. Now, I have to contend again with gravity and three dimensions and time. It’s impossible to tell whether time has run out or whether there is a glut of time, more time than can be stomached.

  “I’m sorry, but you were hysterical. I didn’t mean to knock you out for so long. Chloroform’s not an exact science.”

  I sit up, scratch my mouth where a rash has blistered. He explains that it is from the chloroform. I notice that I am now wearing a yellow dress.

  Dobbs holds up his hands when I spring from the cot. Instantly, the room begins spinning.

  “Take it easy. You’ve got to wait for the dizziness to pass.”

  Dizziness? I put my hands to my head to make sure there isn’t a vise clamped around it.

  “Just to be clear, nothing improper happened. I dressed you, is all. When it was called for, I averted my eyes.”

  We are in the large round room again, between the partitions where sleeping is supposed to be done. “I want my own clothes.”

  He looks at the cubbyhole at the foot of the bed where my clothes are washed and folded neatly. I grab them and storm into the bathroom.

  By the time I come out, he has a cup of tea and a slice of toast waiting for me and insists it will help with the nausea. I refuse to eat, and he refuses to stop talking. I stand by the only door out of this room. On the other side of it is the staircase. I listen for the sounds of thundering footsteps. They’re going to be calling for me soon. I need to be where I can yell back.

  “I don’t think you were paying too much attention earlier, but as I said, this is one of twelve silos in the state of Kansas. Nebraska, Oklahoma, and a few other states have theirs, and that’s not counting all the A’s, D’s, and Titans. This here’s the F—the last type of Atlas complex to be built. Where we are now, the upper level, used to be the crew’s living quarters. The lower level is where all the controls were. And, of course, there’s the silo.” He goes over to the central pillar and points to the twelve-inch gap between it and the floor. “You can see the lower level from here.”

  He explains that the floor of this level and the identical one below are stacked on top of each other. Forty feet below the ground, both levels are mounted from the ceiling by pneumatic rams. He goes over to a gray cylinder with a gas pressure gauge and assorted steering wheels and spigots. “This is what suspends the floors. They designed it so that if a blast went off on the surface, the whole thing wouldn’t come crashing down.”

  Somehow, we are back on the walking tour. Somehow, I am still holding tightly to the belief that if I go along with the lesson, this will all eventually come to an end. There is a chance I can nod my way out. He unlocks and opens the main door again. Briefly, I glance up the staircase, but he shoves me to the right. We go down the flight that makes a half-turn after six stairs. Another six steps and we are dir
ectly below the room above. The entrance to this room is not a steel door like the one upstairs. It is more like an office door.

  “Welcome to the Launch Control Center.” He unlocks the door and swings it open. We step into another spherical room. At its center is the thick concrete column. Peg-Board partitions divide the space into a series of slice-of-pie-shaped rooms. Against the circular outer wall are angled support beans, a mess of wires, and pipes bent like straws. Dobbs says something about having remodeled the space for “optimized self-sufficiency.”

  “All the old control panels are gone, but it doesn’t take much to imagine the controllers strapped into their chairs and waiting for the order to launch.”

  “Launch what?”

  “An ICBM. The A-bomb. You know—kaboom?” He makes an exploding gesture.

  That’s what people put in a place like this!

  “No, no, don’t worry. There isn’t a missile in here anymore. These days, nobody cares that these places even exist, much less the reason they were built in the first place. Most of them were constructed in the early sixties, only to be decommissioned a few years later. Some you could snap up for as little as fifteen thousand dollars. Of course, those were the ones that were vandalized or flooded, and you needed a ton of money to get them halfway livable. Some jokers have spent thousands fitting them with wall-to-wall carpeting and simulated daylight. They bring down all kinds of fancy furniture and stereo equipment and satellite TVs. It’s a disgrace, if you ask me. It’s a mockery of what these structures represent.”

  I can’t do anything but nod.

  “Ten years ago was when I bought this beauty.”

  He raises those colorless eyebrows and presses his lips together so the corners of his mouth turn down. I am obviously supposed to be impressed.

  There are three clocks on the wall, each with little plaques beneath them: DC, LONDON, MOSCOW. Somewhere on the other side of the world, people are sitting down for supper, saying grace.

  “There was a time when this country took the safety of its citizens seriously. Folks were encouraged to prepare for the inevitable, to be self-sufficient. These days, you talk about fallout shelters, people think you’re nuts. What do they think? The government’s going to take care of them? Now, that’s something to laugh at.”

  He opens a plywood door, and we pass into a cubicle he calls the Vault. It’s about the size of my bedroom. In the middle of this space, stacked back-to-back, are gray cabinets like the ones at the school library where they keep all the index cards.

  “You ever heard of the antediluvian period?”

  I shake my head.

  “You know who Noah is, right?”

  He waits for me to nod.

  “Well, between the Creation and the Great Flood was the antediluvian period. The Bible calls it a time of great wickedness. People lived too long, so there was overpopulation, and that’s always the main problem right there. It was also a time giants called Gibborim ruled the earth. ‘Men of renown,’ if you read Genesis six. See where this is going?”

  Again, I am required to nod.

  “The entire world was run by just a few powerful men, and then, bam! Everyone and everything gets wiped out, except for Noah and his family and a few thousand species of animals. Come, I want to show you something.”

  Dobbs pulls out a drawer crammed with packets of seeds. “Here’s where I keep the herb seeds.” In another drawer are flower seed packets. “What’s your favorite vegetable?”

  I don’t like it in here with him. It’s too tight. He smells of disinfectant. We’re too close.

  “Come on. Green beans? Carrots? How about rhubarb? You like rhubarb pie, don’t you?”

  Because I can picture Mama cutting thick slices of tomato for sandwiches, I say, “Tomatoes.”

  “Fruit.” He pulls open a different drawer. “Heirloom, Roma, plum, cherry—take your pick.” He fans several packs like a hand of cards. “A bunch of scientists have been tampering for years with the genetic makeup of seeds. They’ve got patents on seeds that can’t reproduce themselves. Can you believe that? You can’t grow your own crops without having to go to a seed manufacturer. And who do you think the seed manufacturer works for?”

  “The farmers?” I offer cautiously.

  Dobbs returns the packets and slides the drawer shut. The sound echoes through the room like an exclamation mark. “The Gibborim, the handful of corporate CEOs who run this country. Once again, everything is controlled by the mighty few, right down to the lowly tomato. It’s not just our food they’re controlling. For years they’ve been hiring researchers to do experiments on weather control. Half the earthquakes, tornadoes, and tidal waves around the world are caused by man-generated electromagnetic waves. They’ve got Mother Nature on the run. They control the weather, the food, the politics, the money. But it’s about to collapse. Every system in our society is at breaking point. In my view, we’re already having a meltdown. Have you seen what’s happening on Wall Street lately? Mark my words, by the end of the year, we’ll have stepped off a cliff.”

  Dobbs opens a drawer of another filing cabinet. “Microfiche. In here are newspapers going back one hundred and twenty years. I’ve got photocopies of other documents. The Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Homestead Act, the Test Ban Treaty, you name it.”

  “That’s nice.” Now, if we can just get out of this room and go upstairs.

  He has me turn around, and I reel backward. On a bookshelf are rows and rows of jars, each one stuffed with some sort of animal. “See why I call this place the Ark? DNA. That’s our ticket to the future.”

  He raps on a steel cabinet with a padlock. “We’ll leave insects for another time, but all told, I’ve got DNA samples of two thousand species.”

  An adjoining door opens into another wedge-shaped cubicle. He has me face a glass display case of old coins. “These ones are actual gold. Krugerrands. Used to be money had value. Now we’re supposed to be happy with a piece of paper with a string of numbers on it, and sometimes not even that much. You ever been to a bank and asked to see your money?”

  Could it be that he has forgotten I’m too young to have a bank account?

  Another door, another room. This one he calls the Inner Sanctum. A desk, a chair, and a cot like the one upstairs. Except for the metal shelves full of old books, it looks like a prison cell. He taps on the spines. A New Theory of the Earth by William Whiston, The Genesis Flood by John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris, The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Mein Kampf is the one he pulls out.

  “You won’t hear anyone admit it, but there are people—people in our government—doing the same thing as Hitler did. You ever heard of eugenics? Back in the thirties, government scientists worked round the clock trying to come up with the human thoroughbred. Back then, you could go to any county fair and there would be half a dozen judges reviewing the genetic panels of entrants like they were blue-ribbon hogs. Fitter Family Contests, they called them. Next thing, the government started rounding up criminals, mental cases, cripples, people with incurable diseases, you name it, and stuck them in camps and started sterilizing them. They want you to believe that’s all in the past, but you’d be surprised what they’re doing behind the scenes. You have any idea what the welfare costs are for a cripple in this country? Back then, they estimated 1.2 million dollars. Quadruple that amount today. Economics is what it boils down to. Keeping people from draining the system, keeping people from sucking off their profits.”

  The last room has a steel wall and a steel door with a keypad. He punches a code, and a soft click releases the dead bolt. It is not much bigger than the walk-in closet Daddy built for Mama. As soon as I see the glass cabinet, I step back. “Nothing to be afraid of,” Dobbs says, pushing me in. He closes the door, locks it, then uses a key to unlock the gun safe.

  “This here’s a .38 caliber revolver—the perfect weapon for one of the gentler persuasion. No safeties, easy to load, no magazine to lose, and it doesn�
��t have the heavy muzzle blast you get with magnum cartridges.” He offers it to me.

  I clasp my hands together, shake my head.

  “Never heard of a country girl afraid of guns.” He puts it back and takes out another gun. “This is a must-have. The 9mm Glock model 17—it’s my preference over the standard-issue Beretta.” He handles it the way you would a small furry pet. “Bolt-action Winchester 69; that one used to be my grandfather’s. It’s fine for hunting small game, and the ammo is cheap. This is a Mosin-Nagant 91-30. It will stop a moose. And this is my father’s 12-gauge Remington 870.”

  In a drawer at the bottom of the safe is ammunition, along with gas masks and a gadget that looks like a game console. He calls it a radiation detector. “The government has hoarding laws, if you can believe that. See if they stop me.” Dobbs laughs, and it sounds exactly like something bound up in a garbage disposal.

  “Can we go now?”

  He locks the cabinets, then the steel door, and we make the circular route around the central pillar, passing from room to room until we are back on the landing of the lower level.

  “Saved the best for last.”

  More?

  He has to pull me down another six stairs to a tube of corrugated iron about fifty feet long with a diameter of about eight feet. It has a false floor that makes me think of a gangplank off a pirate ship. Running at eye level on each side is a slither of thick cables. The utility tunnel, he calls it. At the far end is the door. Even from fifty feet away, it looks ominous. Everything in me says, Don’t take another step. Whatever he says, do not go in there.

  I back up. Dobbs starts shoving again. I dig in my heels. He puts his shoulder into it and leans against me.

  “Please, no farther.”

  He pushes me all the way to the end. Off to the side are two small rooms. One is not much bigger than the size of Mama’s pantry. He says it’s the battery room. The one next to it is the generator room. Huge contraptions take up the space. He points to big steel drums and tells me they’re the fuel for making our own electricity when the time comes.