Larkin wasn’t sure if he would refer to the people on the surface as “the enemy.” What had happened to them wasn’t really their fault, other than trusting to luck to keep them alive in case of a nuclear war. And more than 99.9 percent of the population had done exactly the same thing.
On the other hand, Larkin had seen the expression on the mutilated face of the survivor who had come down from the blockhouse. Disease had done more than ravage that man’s body. It had turned him mad with resentment and filled him with hate. He would have done harm to the residents if he’d been able to get into the Hercules Project, and in a very real way, that did make him “the enemy.”
Moultrie came in while Larkin was thinking about that, and the talk in the room immediately stopped as everyone turned to look at the project’s founder and leader. Deb was with him, and both of them wore grim expressions.
“Hello, everyone,” Moultrie said as he walked to the head of the table. “Thank you for coming. Please sit down.”
They took chairs. Susan came back to sit next to Larkin. Deb sat at one end of the table, Moultrie at the other.
“I’m sure all of you have a pretty good idea why we’re here,” Moultrie went on. “We need to figure out a plan to deal with the problem facing us. I’ll be honest with you. I considered this possibility when I was putting the project together, but I never believed it to be a real likelihood. All the odds seemed to be that no one in the area would survive a nuclear war except us.”
No one else looked like they were going to say it, so Larkin did. “Those survivors may have come in from somewhere else. From what we know, there are probably large parts of West Texas that are still livable.”
Moultrie leaned back slightly in his chair and said, “It depends on what you mean by livable. There’d be no power because of the EMPs knocking out everything that relies on computers, which is almost everything electronic and mechanical these days. Depending on the winds, the fallout could be dangerous. And twenty-first-century people just aren’t equipped, mentally or physically, to deal with an eighteenth-century existence. I suspect the mortality rates have been extremely high all across Texas during the past eight months.”
He was probably right about that, Larkin thought. But it still didn’t rule out the chance that the survivors moving around up on the surface had come from somewhere else.
But then Larkin had to ask himself if it really mattered one way or the other. He supposed it didn’t. The survivors were there and in bad shape, wherever they came from.
“We’ve had other suspicious readings from the motion sensors in the past few days,” Moultrie went on. “The data is too fragmentary to make even a wild guess about how many survivors there might be. At least a handful.”
“We could easily handle a few more people,” Jessica Kenley said. She had been a pediatrician before the war, although down here there were no real specialists anymore. All the doctors had to treat whatever patients came their way.
“Even if we knew there were only three or four, it would mean opening the project and exposing everyone down here to outside contaminants. I’m not willing to do that yet.”
Bald, dour Dr. Stan Davis spoke up, saying, “We’ve all seen the footage from the stairwell camera. Anyone with that degree of radiation sickness is beyond our help. I agree with Graham that it’s not worth the risk.”
“And we don’t know that there are only three or four of them,” Chuck Fisher said. “There could be hundreds of them, maybe more, staying just out of range of our sensors. There’s no telling what they might be plotting against us up there.”
The mention of plotting struck Larkin as a little paranoid, but unfortunately, none of them had any way of knowing whether Fisher was right.
Or did they? Larkin knew he might be pushing his luck, but he asked bluntly, “Is there any truth to the rumors that you’ve sent surveillance cameras up to the surface, Graham?”
Moultrie didn’t answer immediately, which in a way was an answer in itself. Finally, he said, “We did, but the cameras failed after a short time, possibly due to the high levels of radiation. And I wouldn’t give the okay to open the access tubes so they could be taken out and repaired. But in the time they were operational, we got a look around. There were . . . no signs of life. If you’ve ever seen an area after a big wildfire went through, that’s the way it looks up there now. All the vegetation was burned off. The hills are bare dirt and rock. And there was no sun. You’ve heard about nuclear winter. That seems to be what the area is experiencing. The clouds of dust and ash still in the sky are causing a state of perpetual dusk. The temperature hadn’t gotten out of the forties, we know that much from our other sensors, even though we don’t have eyes up there anymore. It’s pretty bleak, my friends. No place for humanity.” He paused. “We’re better off down here.”
“No one’s doubting that,” Larkin said.
Fisher said, “The important thing is that we don’t know how much of a threat those people represent, so we have to proceed as if they’re a danger to us. I know you mean well, Dr. Kenley, but we can’t open the doors.”
“Is that what we’re debating here?” she asked.
“It’s not a debate,” Moultrie said. “I’m not going to risk the safety of everyone down here. My humanitarian impulses ended the day they dropped the bomb.”
Susan said, “There are some residents who would say that you calling all the shots makes this a dictatorship, Graham.”
Moultrie smiled. “Do you feel that way, Susan?”
“I didn’t say I did. As a matter of fact, I don’t feel that way. But you know who does.”
“Charlotte Ruskin and her friends.”
“And people like Beth Huddleston and her husband.”
Moultrie arched an eyebrow. “Beth and Jim? Really? I thought they were in agreement with how things have been going.”
Beth would disagree that the sky was blue, just to be disagreeable, Larkin thought. But these days . . . well, who could say what color the sky really was, with all those clouds of dust and ash blocking the sun?
“We’re losing sight of why we’re here,” Fisher said. “We’re not letting anyone else in, that’s clear enough. But what are we going to do if they try to get in?”
“You mean force their way in?” Larkin asked.
“That’s right. They have to be desperate. There’s no telling what they might do. They busted into the blockhouse, didn’t they?”
One of the engineers said, “I don’t see how they did that. Vehicles won’t run without computers, will they?”
Moultrie smiled. “You’re too young to remember when cars didn’t have computers, Jared, but some of us here aren’t. As long as they’ve got gas to run it and the charge in the battery holds out, an old truck with a carburetor will work just fine. I’m sure that’s what they used to crash into the blockhouse and knock down the door. There may be a lot of other vehicles up there that will still run.”
“That’s not eighteenth-century technology,” Larkin pointed out. “Neither are the weapons they could have.”
“Exactly,” Moultrie said, nodding. “I have trouble believing they could come up with enough explosives to damage the blast door, and they’d have to get through two of them, not just one. But we can’t rule it out, so we have to be ready just in case. We control the ventilation system in the antechamber between the doors. I propose that if there’s ever a breach of the outer door, we pump poison gas into the chamber. In fact, we can flood the whole stairwell with it.”
A tense silence filled the room in response to Moultrie’s suggestion. Susan and Dr. Kenley stared at him in apparent disbelief at what they had just heard, and some of the technical staff looked uneasy, too. Finally, Dr. Kenley said, “Graham, you’re talking about murder.”
From the other end of the table, Deb spoke up for the first time since entering the meeting. She said, “No, he’s talking about self-defense. We’ve already killed to protect the project. Or have you forgotten abo
ut some of the things that happened on the day of the war? There’s a good chance that if we hadn’t stopped people from flooding in here, we’d all be dead by now.”
Quietly, Moultrie said, “Deb’s right. I won’t deny that the idea is distasteful, but it’s a matter of survival.”
Fisher said, “I don’t find anything distasteful about the idea of killing murderous bastards who want to kill us.” He turned to Larkin. “You saw that guy who came down here, Patrick. He didn’t have anything good in mind, did he?”
“No, he didn’t,” Larkin admitted. “He probably knew there was a good chance he couldn’t get in, but if he’d been able to, I think he’d have tried to hurt somebody.”
“Or get help for himself and the other survivors,” Susan said.
“They’re bound to know they’re beyond help,” Fisher said. “That’s why all they have in mind is revenge.”
Dr. Kenley said, “You can’t know what’s in their minds, Chuck. Hope is a big part of the human spirit. People don’t like to give up. They’ll cling to hope long past the point that it’s reasonable.”
“Doesn’t change the fact that they’re a danger to us.”
Moultrie said, “No, it doesn’t.” He looked at the engineers and technicians. “Start setting up an apparatus to pump the gas into the antechamber and stairwell. Stan, you’ll be in charge of actually producing the gas.”
Davis nodded. “I can do that.”
“We’re going to be doubling the guard on the entrances as well,” Moultrie continued. “I want to be sure that each man is issued plenty of ammunition. The odds of it ever coming to a fight are pretty slim, but I’d just as soon not take chances.”
Moultrie was giving orders now, Larkin thought. The “discussion” was over, and it had been mostly for show, anyway. Before Moultrie ever came in here, his mind had been made up about what he was going to do. Although if anyone had come up with a good argument against it, he might have changed his mind.
Or would he? Larkin had to ask himself that question. As he cast his mind back over the preceding months, he couldn’t recall a single occasion when anybody had talked Graham Moultrie out of anything. Moultrie would listen, then do what he wanted to do all along. Maybe the Hercules Project was a dictatorship. A benevolent one, at least so far, but still a dictatorship.
Good Lord, Larkin thought. Was he actually agreeing with Charlotte Ruskin? He didn’t trust her, that was for sure. He didn’t trust anybody who ranted about oppression and dictators. As far as he could tell, any time somebody wanted to overthrow a so-called dictator, it was so they could become one themselves.
Before Moultrie could say anything else, the speaker of the old-fashioned wired intercom on the table at his elbow crackled, and an urgent voice said, “Graham, we need you to come to the Situation Room, please, if you can find the time.”
Larkin drew in a sharp breath. He recognized that voice. It belonged to his daughter.
Moultrie pushed the button to talk and said, “On my way, Jill.” As he came to his feet, he looked at Larkin and Fisher. “You fellows come with me.”
Dr. Kenley asked worriedly, “What’s going on now?”
“I don’t know, Jessica, but I’m going to find out.”
Moultrie stalked toward the door with Fisher right behind him. Larkin hesitated just long enough to put a hand on Susan’s shoulder and squeeze, then followed them. As they walked along the hallway, Larkin saw the expressions on the faces of the other two men and said, “This isn’t good, is it?”
“‘Find the time’ is today’s Code Red phrase,” Fisher said. “It means somebody is coming down the stairs from the surface.”
Chapter 31
The Situation Room had access to all the same feeds and data from the cameras and monitors that the regular security room did, plus the setup Moultrie used for addressing everyone in the project and override controls for all the equipment. One member of the security force was on duty there around the clock, tasked with alerting Moultrie immediately, at any hour of the night or day, if anything unusual happened. Larkin had done plenty of those shifts himself but had never had to summon Moultrie.
Jill was sitting in front of a bank of monitors. She turned her chair slightly and looked back over her shoulder. She pointed at one of the screens and said, “There he is.”
Larkin, Moultrie, and Fisher crowded in around her and leaned forward to peer at the screen. A different man than before stood on one of the steps near the bottom of the staircase. He wore a khaki shirt and jeans, and although the clothes were stained and ragged, they were in better shape than the tatters the first man had worn.
The same was true of the man himself. His long, bony face had an unhealthy pallor to it, and several sore places were visible, but his skin hadn’t begun to slough off yet. He still had brown hair on his head, although it was thinning, whether naturally or from radiation sickness, there was no way to tell. He was thin, but not to the point of starvation.
He was looking directly into the camera. His slash of a mouth opened and his lips moved. No sound came from the speakers in the Situation Room.
“No audio feed?” Larkin asked.
“It went down a while back,” Fisher said. “And we haven’t gone out to fix it.”
Larkin could understand that. “Anybody read lips?”
Jill said, “I think he’s asking if we can hear him.”
“Damn, I wish we could talk to him,” Moultrie said. “Maybe he’d let something slip about how many of them there are and what they want.”
Fisher said, “I’ll tell you what they want. They want in here.”
“You’re probably right,” Moultrie said with a nod. “Wait, what’s he doing?”
The man had taken a notebook from a hip pocket of his jeans. He slid a marker out of his shirt pocket, opened the notebook, and began writing something on one of the pages. After a moment, he turned the notebook around and held it up toward the camera so they could read the large, printed letters.
IS MY WIFE IN THERE? IS SHE SAFE? HER NAME IS CHARLOTTE RUSKIN.
“Ohhhh, hell,” Fisher said. “He’s alive.”
“That’s Nelson Ruskin?” Larkin said.
Moultrie sighed and said, “It is. I recognize him now. He’s changed a lot in the past eight months, of course.” He reached over and flipped some switches on the console in front of Jill.
“That woman can’t find out about this,” Fisher declared. “She’s raised enough hell already, and it’ll just get worse if she knows her husband is out there.”
Jill looked around and said, “You don’t think she has a right to know he’s still alive?”
“No, I don’t, and you’re not going to tell her. That’s an order.”
Larkin didn’t care for Fisher’s tone of voice as the man spoke to Jill, but he reminded himself not to think of her as his daughter right now. They were all members of the security force, and Fisher had a point. Charlotte Ruskin was already a troublemaker, and she would go batshit crazy if she found out her supposedly dead husband was right on the other side of the blast doors, alive but clearly not well.
“Anyway,” Fisher went on, “he’s got the radiation sickness, too. Look at those sores on his face.”
Larkin couldn’t stop himself from playing devil’s advocate. “It’s not as advanced a case as that other guy we saw. Maybe we could do something to help him.”
“What? Prolong his misery by a few more weeks or months?” Fisher shook his head. “Not worth the chance.”
Jill asked, “Isn’t there any way we can at least let him know his wife’s alive?”
“Not really,” Moultrie said. “I suppose we could open the inner door and try to tap out a message on the outer one in Morse code, but there’s no way of knowing if Ruskin understands it.”
“You wanted to establish communication,” Larkin pointed out. “That might be one way of doing it.”
“It’s too risky,” Fisher insisted.
“That little cham
ber between the blast doors hasn’t been contaminated, has it?”
Moultrie rubbed the beard on his chin as he frowned in thought. After a moment he said, “No, it’s still fine. The outer door is sealed and hasn’t been breached at all. It’s pretty thick, but if you took a hammer and banged on it, Ruskin ought to be able to hear it.”
“It’s a bad idea, Graham,” Fisher said. “You don’t know what kind of trick Ruskin and his friends are trying to pull.”
Larkin said, “Do you really think they have the capability to carry out any kind of trick? It’s probably taken everything they have just to stay alive up there. They’re not plotting against us.”
“You can’t guarantee that.”
“No more than you can guarantee that they are.”
“That’s enough,” Moultrie said. “I would like to know more about what’s going on at the surface. We need to find somebody who knows Morse code.”
“I do,” Larkin said.
Jill looked up at him and said, “Dad, wait a minute—”
“It’s a good idea, it ought to work, and I won’t be taking much of a chance. I can do it, Graham.”
“If anything goes wrong, we won’t be able to let you back in,” Fisher warned.
Jill looked like she was going to protest about that, but Moultrie said, “I’m afraid Chuck’s right, Patrick. We can open the inner door and let you into the antechamber, but then we’ll have to seal it up again, and if there’s any sort of breach—as unlikely as that seems—we won’t open it.”
Larkin nodded and said, “I understand that. But this won’t be the first time I’ve volunteered for a job with some risk to it.”
“No, I imagine it’s not,” Moultrie said, smiling faintly. “If you’re sure you want to tackle it, we’ll give it a try.”
“Dad, you ought to go talk to Mom before you do this,” Jill said.
“Nah, she knows what I’m like. Besides, she might try to talk me out of it. Better she doesn’t know until it’s all over and I’m fine.”
The Doomsday Bunker Page 20