She nodded and smiled faintly, still not recalling him. She had talked to so many people, and she’d never been that good with names and faces.
“I shouldn’t have been there, I suppose,” Trahn went on. “I’m Command Center staff.”
“Oh. Did Moultrie send you as a spy?”
“What?” Trahn looked surprised. “No! Not at all. I was just curious what you had to say. My grandparents, they came from North Vietnam. They escaped and immigrated to America. But they knew what it was like to live under a dictatorship, and I’ve never forgotten their stories. I guess that’s made me . . . I don’t know . . . a little leery of one person or group having too much power.”
Charlotte Ruskin’s polite smile turned into an ironic sneer. “And yet you work for Graham Moultrie.”
“I was chosen for Command Center staff because of my technological skills,” Trahn said defensively. “That doesn’t mean I agree with everything Mr. Moultrie does. In fact, that’s why I came looking for you today.”
“If you have something to say, Charles, I wish you’d go ahead and say it. I have a shift in the gardens in a few minutes.”
Trahn jerked his head in a nod. “You know the rumors about how there’s something still alive on the surface?”
“Everybody has heard about that.”
“Well, they aren’t just rumors. They’re true. There are people still alive up there.” Trahn paused. “And one of them is your husband.”
Charlotte Ruskin felt like she’d been punched. She took a step back and drew in a sharp breath. She didn’t dare let herself believe what she had just heard, so she said, “That’s not true!”
“It is,” Trahn insisted. “I was on duty yesterday and saw him with my own eyes. He came down the stairwell at the main entrance and held up a note for the surveillance camera there. It asked about you.”
She shook her head. “You’re lying.”
“Why would I lie about something like that?”
Charlotte Ruskin cast about wildly in her mind for an answer. She said, “Moultrie sent you to upset me, to distract me.”
“That’s crazy,” Trahn said. “If Mr. Moultrie knew I was telling you this, I’d be in big trouble. As soon as we all realized what was happening, he cut that feed to the regular Command Center monitors and sent it directly to his Situation Room. Only there. He and a few of his security people know what happened after that, but they’re the only ones. Your husband was there, though, right on the other side of the exterior blast door. I saw him with my own eyes.”
A wave of dizziness washed through her. She had to reach out and rest a hand on the wall to brace herself.
“I’m sorry,” Trahn went on. “I know it’s a real shock. I wrestled with myself all last night and earlier today, trying to decide if I ought to tell you. Finally, I . . . I knew I couldn’t keep it a secret. You deserve to know the truth.”
Her heart was pounding so hard it felt like it was going to burst out of her chest. All along, she had felt like Nelson was still alive. Logic and reason said that he wasn’t, but the connection, the bond between them, was still there. She would have known if it was broken. Even though, eventually, she had turned to Jeff Greer for comfort because she was a passionate woman by nature, she had experienced pangs of guilt. She had been aware somehow that she was cheating on her husband.
Now she knew that her instincts hadn’t deceived her. She’d been right all along.
That is, if she could trust Charles Trahn. He certainly looked sincere, and he looked more than a little afraid of her, too. That was enough to convince her he was speaking the truth.
She reached out and caught hold of his arm. He flinched and tried to pull away, but her grip tightened. Her jaw was tense as she said, “Tell me everything you know.”
“I . . . I already did—”
“No, you didn’t. How did he look? Is he all right?”
“Well . . . not too bad, I guess,” Trahn said. “Understand, I didn’t get a very long look at him. Like I told you, Moultrie cut all the feeds except his private one. But your husband . . . Mr. Ruskin . . . looked like he’d had a hard time of it. You know it’s bound to have been pretty bad up there on the surface.”
Pretty bad was putting it mildly, Charlotte Ruskin thought. Hell on earth was more like it.
“Was he sick?”
Trahn swallowed. “Yeah, I guess. He had some, you know, sore places on his face. And I could tell he hadn’t had enough to eat for a long time. But he was moving around okay and seemed strong enough. He had, like, a notebook and a marker, and that’s how he wrote the message he held up to the surveillance camera. He asked about you. He wanted to know if you were in here and okay.”
She had to close her eyes and take several deep breaths. Emotions ran riot inside her. Chief among them was relief that Nelson was still alive, but she also felt a surge of pure rage that Graham Moultrie had known about this and not told her. He would have let her go on thinking her husband was dead. She would have continued mourning for him.
When she opened her eyes, she asked, “What did Moultrie tell him?”
“I have no idea.”
“Who else knew?”
“You mean about your husband? Uh, besides me, there was only one other guy on duty at the security monitors right then. A guy named Pierce Watson.” Trahn shook his head. “He’ll never say anything, though. He thinks Mr. Moultrie is God.”
“But you don’t.”
“He’s just as human as the rest of us. He can make mistakes. Or make decisions based on his own self-interest.”
“What about the others? Who else?”
“Let me think.” Trahn frowned for a few seconds, then said, “I believe Jill Sinclair was on duty in the Situation Room, and I don’t remember seeing her come out. Mr. Moultrie wasn’t there at first, and he came in, in a hurry, so I guess Jill called him. He had Chuck Fisher and Patrick Larkin with him. Larkin is Jill’s dad—”
“I know who he is,” Charlotte Ruskin broke in. “So the four of them were in the Situation Room?”
“Yeah. And a minute or so after they went in there, Mr. Ruskin held up the notebook with the message he’d printed on it and then the rest of the feeds went down. So I know Mr. Moultrie had to give the order. That was the time line.”
“The bastard.”
Trahn assumed correctly who she was talking about and said, “I’m sure Mr. Moultrie felt like he had a good reason—”
“He’s a damned tyrant, that’s his reason. How dare he keep that from me!”
“Yeah, I didn’t feel like that was right. That’s why I finally decided to come and find you—”
Charlotte Ruskin took hold of his arm again. “Don’t say anything about this to anybody.”
Trahn looked confused and scared again. “I thought you’d want people to know.”
“Not until I figure out the best way to handle this. Just keep your mouth shut, understand?”
Trahn swallowed and nodded. “Of course.”
She let go of him and forced a smile. “Thank you for telling me. I won’t forget this kindness.”
“Sure. If, uh, if there’s anything else I can do to help . . .”
“You’ve done plenty,” Charlotte Ruskin told him.
In fact, he had changed everything.
* * *
Jeff Greer knew that Charlotte Ruskin didn’t love him. She was still in love with her husband, and that wasn’t liable to change any time soon. She seemed like one of those ladies who’d cling to the memory of her dead hubby forever, as if they actually believed in soul mates and shit like that.
No, Charlotte had hooked up with him for two reasons: she needed somebody who didn’t mind kicking ass to help her settle the score with Graham Moultrie, and she needed a man to hold her in the night when the loneliness got to be too much.
Greer could accept that just fine because he had his own reasons for being with Charlotte. She was a damned good-looking woman for her age—which was a few years
older than him—and he didn’t like Moultrie and was glad to go along with anything that would bust the guy’s chops. Greer had been in the real-estate business himself, before the war, and he had seen too many guys like Moultrie, golden boys whose projects always came in on time and under budget and made money hand over fist. Greer had done all right for himself—well enough to afford a place in this bunker—but he was nowhere near as successful as Moultrie had been, and that just wasn’t fair.
So he was all right with letting Charlotte call the tune. It got him laid, and it meant that sooner or later Moultrie would get what he had coming to him, and those things were just fine and dandy with Jeff Greer.
He hadn’t really expected things to come to a head so quickly, though. He frowned as he propped himself up on an elbow and looked at Charlotte.
“We’re going to do what now?”
“Take over the freight elevator,” she said. She had come out of the shower in her Corridor Two quarters with a towel wrapped around her body and another caught up around her dark red hair. “Moultrie has men guarding it, but we can deal with that. You can run it, can’t you?”
“A moron could run a freight elevator, or any other kind,” Greer said. “There’s a hatch at the top of the shaft, though, isn’t there?”
“It’s controlled from down here. We can get someone to open it.”
“You seem mighty sure about that.”
“I am.”
Greer frowned. “That still doesn’t explain why. I mean . . . there’s nothing up there on the surface I want.”
“There’s something I want,” Charlotte said as she unwound the towel and resumed drying her hair. “You’ve heard the rumors about there being survivors from the war?”
“Sure. Everybody’s heard them. But there’s no proof—”
“Yes, there is. And Moultrie and his bunch of goons have been in contact with at least one of them.” She paused. “Don’t get upset about this, Jeff, but my husband is still alive.”
He sat up sharply in the bed. “What! You mean . . . Nelson?”
“He’s the only husband I have,” Charlotte said with a smile.
“But he didn’t get into the bunker.”
“That’s why he’s up on the surface. But he’s alive. I’ve talked to someone from Moultrie’s staff who actually saw him just outside the blast doors. There’s no telling how many other people are still up there, starving and trying to survive any way they can. They need help.”
“Well, yeah, but . . .” Greer’s brain struggled to process what she had told him. The light dawned on him, and he said, “You want to go up and get them, don’t you?”
“Moultrie didn’t have any right to lock them out in the first place. You know what he’s like, Jeff. He’s a little tin-plated dictator who enjoys playing God.”
“Yeah, that’s true. I can’t stand the guy. But this? This kind of changes everything, doesn’t it?”
She came to the bed and sat down beside him. “It doesn’t have to.”
“Sure it does. If you get your husband back, that’s pretty much the end for you and me, isn’t it? You won’t need me anymore.”
“Damn it, I need you for a lot more than this. We’ve stood up and fought together against Moultrie’s heavy-handed rule, haven’t we? Nothing’s going to change about that. The people are looking to you and me to lead that effort.”
“You’re talking politics. I’m talking about—”
Her arm slid around the back of his neck as she moved against him. “I know what you’re talking about,” she said as she leaned in, her face close to his. “And I still say that doesn’t have to change.”
Her mouth found his. His hand went to the towel wrapped around her and pushed it away. In the back of his head, a little voice warned, She’s playin’ you, you dumbass.
I know that, Greer told the voice. But right now, he was still getting what he wanted, and there was really no way to predict what might happen in the future. He would deal with that when the time came, he decided.
“Now,” he said in a half-whisper as his arms went around her, “just how is it you plan to get that hatch at the top of the elevator shaft open . . .?”
Chapter 34
Charles Trahn was as American as could be. He had been born in Dallas, grew up in Irving, then gotten a good job in Arlington doing international accounting for a bank. He was lucky he had been in Fort Worth on the day the bomb fell, doing some work at one of the bank’s locations over there, so he’d been able to reach the Hercules Project in time to get in. He’d had to get a loan to afford the place—one of his buddies at work had helped him with that—and of course now it didn’t matter because he’d never have to pay it back.
Of course, he might never have a regular job or a home or a family, either, but he was alive and he was grateful for that every single day.
Grateful enough that when Charlotte Ruskin cornered him in his quad in the lower bunker, he didn’t want to even listen to what she was saying, let alone agree to go along with the crazy idea.
“Look, I never should have said anything to you,” he told her, trying to keep his voice steady. That wasn’t easy when he kept darting glances at Jeff Greer, who had come with her and now stood behind and to one side of her, arms crossed over his broad chest. He had the look of a guy who had played college football and then tried to stay in shape afterward, without a whole lot of success.
But he was still taller, heavier, and no doubt meaner than Charles Trahn. None of those things would have taken very much.
“You were just trying to do the right thing, Charles. We know that. And I appreciate it more than I can say. Now I need you to do the right thing again.”
Trahn glanced around the vast, dormitory-like bunker. No one was close by at the moment. If Ruskin and Greer wanted to intimidate him with their visit—and of course they did—they had chosen the right moment for it. Trahn could yell for help if they attacked him, but Greer could get in several good shots before anybody came running up to stop him. Trahn had always feared physical violence.
“What do you want?” he asked warily.
“You work rotating shifts in the Command Center, right?”
Trahn nodded. “Yeah.”
“When’s your next middle-of-the-night shift?”
“I’ve got the midnight-to-six in, uh, three days from now, I think.”
“And you have access to the controls that open and close things? Like doors?”
Trahn’s eyes got big. “Oh, hell no,” he said. “You want me to open the blast doors? I can’t do that. It takes a special access card to do that, and I don’t have it. Only a few people do. Just Mr. Moultrie and his top staff.”
“What about the hatch at the top of the freight elevator shaft?”
“It’s the same deal. It takes a card with the right chip on it.”
“But if you had that card, you could open it?”
“Yeah, more than likely, but—”
“I’m going to get that for you,” Charlotte Ruskin said. “I need to get up to the surface, so I can be with my husband again.”
“You’re leaving the project?”
“That’s right,” she said.
“But it’s dangerous up there! The radiation—”
“Have you seen the readings from the sensors, Charles? Do you really know what it’s like? Does anyone other than Moultrie and his Gestapo? I mean, people are living up there, right now. It’s been more than eight months, and my husband is still alive. How bad can it be, really?”
“I . . . I don’t know . . .”
“Anyway, it should be my choice, shouldn’t it?” she argued. “If I want to take my chances to be with him again, why shouldn’t I be allowed to do that?”
Trahn looked past her at the silent, scowling Greer. “But I thought the two of you—”
Greer broke his silence by saying, “I just want whatever makes Charlotte happy, buddy. That’s good enough for me.”
“Well . . .” What t
he woman was saying made sense, Trahn supposed. While he worried about contamination, just opening the top of the elevator shaft shouldn’t expose the rest of the project to too much of whatever was up there. Anyway, the atmosphere couldn’t be too toxic or people wouldn’t be able to live in it. Nelson Ruskin had been exposed to it for more than eight months now, and while he hadn’t looked healthy, exactly, he didn’t seem to be on the verge of dying, either. But Trahn was still worried. “I could get in a lot of trouble.”
“Hey, I’d have your back,” Greer said. “Nobody’s gonna give you trouble without going through me first.”
Trahn wasn’t sure how much that reassurance really meant, but at the same time, he could read the menace in Greer’s eyes. If he didn’t go along with what they wanted, one of these days Greer and some of his friends might catch him alone, in some isolated part of the bunker, and then there was no telling what they might do . . .
“All right,” Trahn said. “I don’t think you’ll be able to get one of those access cards, but if you do, I guess I can help you. Nobody could be too mad at me for helping a wife get back together with her husband, right?”
“Of course not,” Charlotte Ruskin said as she smiled and leaned in. She gave Trahn a kiss on the cheek. He felt his face warming. This was ridiculous, he told himself. She was almost old enough to be his mother. But in spite of that, she was kinda hot . . .
Greer stepped up, grinning, and slapped Trahn on the shoulder. “Way to go, pal,” he said. “I knew we could count on a good guy like you.”
Trahn swallowed and nodded. He liked the sound of that, too.
“Three nights from now, you said?” Charlotte Ruskin asked.
“Yep.”
“Then that’s when it’ll happen.”
* * *
Chuck Fisher’s eyebrows rose in surprise when he opened the door of his quarters in Corridor Two and saw Charlotte Ruskin standing there. He recovered quickly and asked in a cold voice, “What do you want?”
“I need to talk to you.”
Fisher shook his head. “I don’t think you and I have anything to talk about.”
“You’d be wrong,” she said. “Something’s going to happen, and you need to know about it.”
The Doomsday Bunker Page 22