The Doomsday Bunker

by William W. Johnstone

  Larkin turned and raced after Trevor and Bailey. There was nothing more he could do here. He hoped the mine going off would discourage anyone else from trying to climb over the fence, but it didn’t really matter, he supposed. Die in an explosion now, die in an explosion in ten or twelve minutes, what was the difference?

  But all the missiles might not make it through, he reminded himself as he ran. Some of them undoubtedly would. The United States would be changed drastically and forever. But would it be wiped out? Would the U.S. and Russia keep lobbing nuclear death at each other until everything was gone?

  Larkin had no way of knowing. None of them did. All they could do was try to save what they could. Save who they could.

  He was aware of the seconds ticking by with each running stride he took. He couldn’t help but glance at the sky, although he knew it was unlikely he would actually be able to see doom descending toward him. If it was all over for him, he wouldn’t know it when the time came, unless there was a split second of awareness, the tiniest shaved fraction of time when he felt his atoms being blown apart . . .

  There was the concrete building that housed the bunker entrance. The door was still open, with armed men standing around it. Graham Moultrie was one of them. He waved Larkin on. Larkin wasn’t surprised to see Moultrie. He figured the man intended to be the last one in, the one to close the door on whatever happened in the outside world.

  More explosions sounded from around the property. More mines going off as fear-crazed people scrambled over walls and fences and tried to find shelter from the storm, somewhere, anywhere. Breathing hard, Larkin pounded up to the small group at the entrance. Moultrie gripped his arm and said, “Glad you made it, Patrick.”

  “My son-in-law . . . and granddaughter . . .?”

  “Inside with the rest of your family.” Moultrie summoned up a grim smile. “Go and join them. Everybody’s gathering on the lower level right now.”

  Larkin managed to nod. He hesitated long enough to say, “You don’t need . . . more help here?”

  “We’re all right. Go on, Patrick. You made sure they had a place to come, and they all got here. You should be proud.”

  “The missiles?”

  “Some have been knocked down or blown out of the sky. But more than half look like they’ll get through.” Moultrie’s face was bleak as he added, “I’m giving it two more minutes, then we’re buttoning up tight here.”

  Larkin nodded. A few people were still trying to get things out of their vehicles and carry them into the project, but if they had any sense they wouldn’t make any more trips out of the building.

  Carrying the rifle, Larkin went into the building and started down the steps. Several people were in front of him, and others followed. When he reached the landing where the stairs turned back, he paused for a second to look back up at the entrance with the afternoon sun shining through it.

  How long would it be, he wondered, before he saw sunlight again?

  Would he ever? Would anyone inside the Hercules Project?

  Larkin didn’t know the answer. He took a deep breath and kept going down.

  * * *

  A lot of people were in the lower bunker, but the cavernous space was so large it didn’t seem particularly crowded. The noise level was pretty high, though, since plenty of them seemed to be talking at once. Once Larkin had been passed through the double blast doors, including a fingerprint scan to confirm his identity, he searched for his family, his size allowing him to move through the press of people without much trouble.

  A hand came out of the crowd and clasped his arm. Larkin looked over and saw Adam Threadgill standing there. Threadgill’s wife Luisa was with him, and beyond them Larkin saw their daughter Sophie and her husband Jack Kaufman.

  “Patrick!” Threadgill threw his arms around Larkin and pounded him on the back with one hand. “You made it.”

  Larkin said, “Yeah, and I’ve got you to thank for telling me about this place, buddy. I might not have known about it otherwise, and we’d still be . . . up there.”

  Threadgill’s face grew solemn. “Yeah. Your family is all here, safe and sound?”

  “They’re somewhere in this crowd, all right.” Larkin put his arm around Luisa’s shoulders and gave her a quick hug, then reached past her to hug Sophie and shake hands with Jack. “Good to see you, son.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Jack said. He looked pale and scared, but so did just about everybody else down here. There was a definite undercurrent of fear to the hubbub.

  “You haven’t seen Susan, have you?” Larkin asked Threadgill.

  The other former Marine shook his head and said, “No, not so far. But if you’re sure she’s down here . . .”

  “I am, but I want to see her with my own eyes, and Jill and Trev and the kids, too.”

  Threadgill nodded. “I know what you mean.”

  “I’ll see you later,” Larkin told them. He resumed his search.

  Before he found his family, he spotted another familiar face, one he didn’t really expect to see down here. He made his way over to the man and woman who stood near one of the walls, talking to each other. The woman saw him coming and frowned.

  “Jim, Beth,” Larkin greeted the Huddlestons as he came up to them. “I, uh, didn’t know you were going to be here.” Even as the words came out of his mouth, he realized how lame they sounded. He might as well have said, I figured you’d get blown to Kingdom Come.

  “We almost weren’t,” Jim Huddleston said. “Got through the gate at the last minute.”

  “Even then I thought some of those goons were going to shoot us,” Beth said. “Give a bunch of rednecks guns and some power, and it’s a bad situation.”

  Larkin ignored that. He was sort of a redneck himself, in many ways, but he knew what Beth was like. Instead he clapped a hand on Huddleston’s shoulder and said, “I’m glad you’re here, Jim.”

  “It’s ridiculous,” Beth said before her husband could respond. “Jim got me all spooked with his talk about nuclear war, but now that I’ve had time to think about it, I’m sure it’s not going to happen. Why, the President is much too smart to ever allow things to get to that point.”

  “Then . . . you haven’t heard?” Larkin said.

  “Heard what?”

  “The Russians hit England with at least five nukes. They and the North Koreans launched missiles aimed at our west coast.” Larkin thought about how much time had passed. “Some of them have probably struck by now, unless we were able to stop all of them. And the odds of that are pretty slim, as gutted as our defenses have gotten over the past few years.”

  Beth’s mouth tightened. “I don’t believe that. You’re just using that as an excuse to complain because your side didn’t win the last election.”

  Huddleston said, “Beth, I don’t think Patrick would make up something like that just to score political points.”

  “Of course he would. Those people will stop at nothing.”

  The longer this conversation went on, the more difficult it was going to be to remain civil, Larkin realized. And having a partisan political argument under these circumstances was just asinine. After today, there was a good chance there wouldn’t be any more political parties. Not for a long, long time, if ever.

  “I need to find my family, so I’m going to keep looking for them,” he told Huddleston.

  “Thanks again, Patrick.”

  Beth didn’t look grateful, just pissed. Larkin was glad he wasn’t going to have to deal with her.

  His nervousness grew as he continued searching for his family. Moultrie and Deb had assured him they were safe for the moment, but like he had told Huddleston, he wouldn’t relax until he saw them for himself.

  Of course, relax was a relative term. None of them could be absolutely certain that the Hercules Project was as safe as Graham Moultrie claimed it was until it was tested. It might turn out that their doom was only postponed briefly. One of those missiles might land right on top of them. Not even thi
s bunker could withstand being ground zero, Larkin thought. But if the end came, he wanted to be with his family when it did.

  He still had the rifle in his right hand. Someone took hold of his left. He looked around and then down and saw his grandson there, smiling up at him.

  “Granddad,” Chris said. “We’re over there.”

  He pointed, and Larkin saw Susan, Jill, Trevor, and Bailey about twenty feet away. His heart slugged like a jackhammer for a couple of seconds as his wife smiled at him. He didn’t trust himself to speak as emotion swept through him.

  Then he grinned down at Chris and said, “How’re you doin’, kid?”

  “I’m all right. Scared, but . . . you know. There are a lot of scary things in the world, Mom says. You have to live in it anyway.”

  “Smart girl, your mom. I taught her everything she knows.”

  “That’s what Grandma says. That she taught Mom everything she knows, I mean.”

  “We can hash that out some other time. Right now, let’s just go see ’em.”

  Susan hugged him as he came up to them, then so did Jill and Bailey. Larkin set the rifle on one of the bunks and returned the hugs. The bunks would be occupied later, but for now none of the residents who’d be staying here had claimed a place.

  Trevor patted Larkin on the shoulder, an awkward gesture but one Larkin appreciated anyway. The younger man said, “Thanks for helping us out there, Patrick. We couldn’t have gotten in here safely if not for you. I guess that’s true in more ways than one.”

  “We’re here, that’s all that matters.”

  “Have you heard anything?” Jill asked. “I mean, about what’s going on?”

  Larkin knew what she meant. Nobody had anything else on their mind today. He shook his head and said, “No, but by now Moultrie’s got the place shut up completely. Maybe he’ll make some kind of announcement soon.”

  “All those people out there . . .” Susan said.

  Larkin put his arm around her shoulder again and drew her against him. “If there was a way to save all of them, we would,” he said. “All we can do is save what we can.”

  She nodded in understanding, but he saw the sheen of tears on her face again. A lot of people down here were crying, he saw. How could they help it? The world they had known all their lives was dying, and there was nothing they could do to stop it.

  There were little clusters of hilarity here and there, people laughing and joking, celebrating because they had made it into this refuge and at least had a chance to live through the disaster. Those happy notes didn’t really ring true, though, Larkin thought. It was easy to be relieved that you might live, harder to act as if the deaths of billions of people didn’t bother you.

  An abrupt silence fell as Graham Moultrie’s voice came from loudspeakers mounted on the walls of the bunker.

  “Welcome to the Hercules Project. All entrances are now closed and securely sealed. No matter what happens from here on out, we are all in this together. We are, potentially, the citizens of a new world. The future is impossible to predict, but one thing we do know is that it will be very, very different from the lives that all of us have known until today.”

  Jill moved up on Larkin’s other side and pressed her shoulder against his. One hand reached out and clasped Trevor’s hand. Her other hand rested on Bailey’s shoulder as the girl stood in front of her, looking up at the speakers. Trevor had his free hand on Chris’s shoulder, holding the boy against him.

  “I know all of you are anxious for news. Here in the command center, we’ve been monitoring all the reports we can from around the world, via the Internet. I will not lie to you: the situation is grave. Within the past half hour, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle have all been hit by nuclear missiles launched from Russian and North Korean naval vessels in the Pacific Ocean. Destruction is widespread, and the loss of human life is incalculable.”

  Gasps and moans came from the crowd assembled in the bunker. Larkin’s arm tightened around Susan’s shoulders.

  “This follows Russian attacks using high-level bombers as well as missiles on England, France, and Germany. No word has come from any of those countries in the past hour. Total destruction is feared. In addition, Iranian missiles carrying low-yield nuclear warheads have landed in Israel and Turkey, and Iran is now carrying out conventional bombing and missile attacks against those countries. American vessels in the Persian Gulf have attacked Iran but so far have been unable to stop their assault.

  “The Pentagon reports that retaliatory strikes by U.S. naval and air forces are being carried out against Russia and North Korea. The President has urged calm from the citizens of this country who have not yet come under attack and has pledged that the United States will be firm and resolute in its opposition to such wanton aggression. He also said that this is not the end of the world.”

  Larkin was willing to bet that no one down here believed that, and probably no one anywhere else did, either. The President might be clinging to some hope that it would turn out to be true . . . otherwise he wouldn’t have anything left to be president of.

  Moultrie went on, “I want to express my deep appreciation to each and every one of you for placing your faith in the Hercules Project. You have my word that I will do everything in my power to make sure we all remain safe in these very trying times. As long as there is news to report, we’ll keep you informed.”

  Larkin knew what he meant by that. Sooner or later, the Internet would go dark and quiet. The infrastructure to support it would be gone. Then, it would be the same as living underneath a dead world, because they would have no way of knowing what was going on above them.

  Or else silence would reign because the rest of the world actually was dead. That possibility couldn’t be discounted, either.

  The concrete floor suddenly shuddered under Larkin’s feet, the lights flickered, and startled screams filled the bunker. Susan clutched Larkin and said, “Patrick, was that . . .”

  “That was a hit,” Larkin said. “Close.”

  Chapter 22

  The lights didn’t go out, and after a moment the screaming trailed off, but the hubbub was louder and people milled around more. Evidently their growing fear drove them to move, even though those movements were aimless for the most part.

  Graham Moultrie’s voice came back on the speakers. “I’m sorry to have to tell you that a missile armed with a nuclear warhead has struck between Fort Worth and Dallas. We’re picking up that news from Internet postings elsewhere in the country, via underground cable from servers in West Texas that are still online. The electromagnetic pulse from that explosion has knocked all technology in this area off-line. We have no reports regarding casualties or destruction at this time, but it’s safe to assume that both are catastrophic. Whenever we have new information, we’ll announce it right away. Until then . . . remain calm. Pray for this country. For the world.”

  The speakers went off with an audible click.

  Susan shuddered against Larkin. “All those people . . .” she breathed.

  He tightened his arm around her shoulders. “I know.”

  Nearby, a woman sank onto one of the bunks and began to sob. Larkin didn’t know if she had friends or family in the blast area or if she was just crying for the loss of life in general, and he supposed it didn’t matter. All around the giant, cavernous chamber, more sobs began to be heard. Sorrow thickened in the air like a visible fog.

  Bailey was crying, too, although she did it quietly, the tears trickling down her cheeks in silence. Chris sniffled but was trying to be brave. Larkin felt the dampness in his own eyes. He was no more immune to what was happening than his grandchildren were.

  Not far away, a man laughed and said, “Biggest bomb to hit Arlington since the Dallas Cowboys.”

  Another man grabbed him by the shoulder and jerked him around, demanding, “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  “Get your hand off me! We’re safe, aren’t we? Don’t expect me to feel sorry for a
ll those losers out there!”

  “My brother lives in Grand Prairie!” a third man yelled.

  “Not anymore, I’ll bet!”

  Larkin listened to the interchange and muttered, “Stupid . . .”

  The third man said, “You son of a bitch!” and threw a punch.

  That was all it took. A wild melee erupted in that part of the chamber as men slugged and cursed at each other. Women and kids weren’t immune from the madness fueled by fear and grief. Larkin herded his family away from the brawl in case it spread in their direction.

  The chaos didn’t last long. Members of Moultrie’s security force showed up to put a stop to the fighting. They wore red vests and looked like guys who might have been working in a discount store, but they were good at their job, getting between combatants and grabbing the ones they had to in order to settle them down. Within a few minutes, the fight was over.

  Moultrie wanted him to be part of that force, Larkin mused. That was probably a good idea. There would be plenty of trouble down here to take care of. That was just human nature. You couldn’t put this many people together in a limited amount of space and not expect problems.

  He was glad, though, that he didn’t have to step in today. He wanted to be with his family as much as he could, this first day of their self-imposed exile.

  A woman pushed through the crowd, calling, “Nelson! Nelson! Are you here? Nelson!” Her voice held a frantic, almost hysterical edge. She came up to Larkin and grabbed his sleeve. “Have you seen my husband? His name is Nelson Ruskin.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, I don’t know him,” Larkin said. “I wouldn’t know if he’s here or not.”

  “I have to find him,” she said with painfully obvious desperation. “He’s supposed to be here. We made plans . . . we had an arrangement . . . If it looked like anything was going to happen, we were both supposed to head out here as quickly as we could . . .”