by Platt, Sean
Other images shuffle past before she can wonder.
A hole in the ground, going down forever, booby trapped and unreachable.
Lines of stones. Monoliths. Perfect precision from supposedly imperfect instruments.
Primitive networks. Nodes.
And points of power — nine of them — where dormant secrets lie hidden.
Meyer is still beside her as the images flit past. “Do you understand?”
Heather does not, and says so.
“But you do. You do.”
She turns to him. None of this matters. And none of this is real.
The days when they would lock themselves in a room with Juha and purge into buckets then travel for hours are long gone. The days of facing their darknesses before finding this place, this togetherness, this space — long gone. She’s dimly aware that she is only dreaming. But the dream is so real, so deep in its understanding. Unlike any dream she’s ever had.
“I miss you,” she says.
Their surroundings change in an instant, as if a switch has been flipped. There are no more scenes of spiritual cliché. No pyramids, no Sphinx, no Incan ruins, no supposition, on the part of the dream, that she should imbue the old places with meaning. Now the background is hard and metallic. Lights. Panels and tables and wires.
“Then protect it for me, Heather,” he says. “Protect what will allow me to return.”
Chapter Fourteen
Heather awoke to a gentle shaking. Her eyes blinked away sleep’s haze, her mind slowly coming around to the realization that she’d been dreaming. She was suddenly sure that the dream was important, and she rushed to hold it close, but it was already slipping away. She’d dreamed of Meyer and a very important task he’d assigned her. But as seconds ticked by, her certainty faded. Why couldn’t it just have been a dream?
“Mom.”
She rolled halfway over beneath the sheets. What time was it? Living underground had shifted her perception of day and night. Clocks no longer mattered. Daytime bled through the skylights and reflectors, but the way it filtered down, never direct, made it feel like just another bulb. Lila and Trevor seemed to be settling into a circadian rhythm that was just under twenty-four hours whereas she (and Piper, Heather guessed, and who the fuck cared about Raj?) wanted to stretch hers to twenty-five or more. If any of them had been sealed away alone, time would probably pass slower for Heather than for her daughter, and in a few weeks they’d disagree on how many days (how many cycles of sleep and awake) had passed. But because they were all trapped together, their schedules blended. Heather was tired more often than she had been topside, and had solved the mismatch by joining her children’s schedules and taking naps. Like the one, she now realized, she was rousing from.
Lila was above her.
“Hey, baby,” Heather said.
“Cameron needs to go.”
“Oh. Well, goodbye, Cameron.”
“I thought you might want to hear what he had to say.”
“Is it different from goodbye?”
Lila smiled down at her mother. She wasn’t a little girl anymore. She’d been knocked up, and despite that being a bad thing by Old World standards, this was the New World, and the pregnancy gave Lila and Heather something to bond over — while, interestingly, caring for Lila had given Heather and Piper something to bond over. So that was nice. But on the other hand, she’d been knocked up by Raj, about which Heather was less enthusiastic. He was probably a catch by most mothers’ standards, but Heather wasn’t most mothers.
“Come on, Mom.”
“I’m really tired. I had a hard day of sitting around underground and watching episodes of ALF.”
“Mom.”
“Why didn’t Alf ever eat that fucking cat he wanted so badly? It was right there, and it’s not like Alf had much self-restraint. I’ve never understood that.”
“I’ve never understood why you like that old show.”
“I’m fascinated by the complex character work.”
“Come on.” Lila tugged at her. Heather protested. But hey, she had this coming. Back when they’d all lived together, Heather had tried to drag Lila out of bed in exactly the same way every school day. Now the tables were turned, so there.
Lila finally dropped Heather’s arm and stood. She was thin, and Heather wondered if she was imagining the tiniest of baby bumps. Probably. They were all getting fat down here. Obese at the end of the world. And to think: there were starving children in Africa. And starving crowds of looting murderer-rapists everywhere, including their front lawn.
“Okay,” Lila said. “I tried. We’ll fill you in later.”
“She coming?” yelled a voice. It sounded like Cameron.
Heather yelled back: “No. You interrupted me before I could.”
Cameron laughed. “Then by all means, finish.”
Lila rolled her eyes. Heather ignored her.
Heather liked Cameron. He was Piper’s age but had the seasoned feel of a much older man. He’d told them how he’d traveled with his father in the past, hitting a world’s worth of obscure destinations — and, once older, how he’d traveled to dozens more places with his band. They didn’t make much money playing obscure backwaters, but Cameron always chose experience over profit. And Dan, bless his heart, went right along. As Cameron’s agent, he worked on commission. But somehow Cameron was allowed to play all the low-paying gigs he wanted.
“‘Night, Mom.”
“No, no, hang on. Just let me wash my face.” She shouted past Lila, through the door, into the living room. “If you’re playing Twister, wait for me!”
“Right foot green,” said Christopher’s voice.
Heather rolled out of bed, wondering if she was netting sleep with these naps. She’d never been a napper back before the ships’ arrival had made life socially awkward. She’d stayed up until 3 a.m., never bothering to break the pattern because she needed it for those nights she had comedy shows. Many times, she’d need to be awake earlier than eleven or noon and would eek through the morning on fumes, drinking cup after cup of highly cream-and-sugared coffee. But even on those nights of little rest, Heather refused to nap. It upset her sense of night and day enough to fatigue her. Little had changed. Naps still tricked her body into thinking day was night, and she still woke feeling like she was wearing a one-ton cloak. But what else was there to do around here besides watch old TV recordings and walk on one of the gravity treadmills?
The two larger bedrooms shared a master bathroom. Heather entered, turned on the light, and thought for a moment of how thankful she was for all of Meyer’s preparations. He hadn’t just built them a haven for what might be the end days. He’d given them a sanctuary with two full bathrooms and a Jacuzzi. If things really went to hell, that Jacuzzi might become a cistern and the bathroom a dark cave in which to store scavenged metal from topside, but for now the wind and sun continued to give them all the electricity required to run the pump. The spring or aquifer or whatever gave them water to fill the tub. So why the hell not have a hot, bubbly soak while the alien invasion went about its business outside? Meyer had been practical like that. He could afford anything, so he bought everything.
And what’s more, he’d done all of it well in advance of knowing what was coming. Damn near psychic of him, everyone agreed. It was enough to make the bunker’s residents believe in the positive power of paranoia. Although Heather, for her part, was beginning to believe Meyer hadn’t been operating as blind as it seemed at first. Nobody else had Heather’s intimate knowledge of Meyer Dempsey. Not even Piper knew him deep to the core, because she never journeyed with him, high on what he called healing. Heather even thought he might’ve had some sort of trippy vision during a few of their ayahuasca sessions that led him to—
She stopped, her hands on the sink’s edge. The mirror was in front of her, as nice as the one in her home (her old home, by now) back in LA. There was a Heather in that reflection, but for a scant moment she seemed to see right through her.
>
What about those sessions?
Something with her dream. She’d dreamt something important. Not just about Meyer, but something with him that seemed to have meaning.
But it was gone.
Still she blinked and ran water in the sink slowly, delicately, feeling something on the tip of her mind’s tongue. The dream was mostly gone, but one of its delicate gossamer threads seemed to still cling. If she was careful, she might not break it. If Heather kept her mind defocused — paying attention to the departing dream while not watching it closely enough to scare it away — it might yet come. If she refused to wake fully. If she let herself settle into the heavy fugue of recent sleep.
She blinked at her reflection. Nothing.
Heather sighed, turned on the water, and was about to cup some to splash her face when she stopped, watching the water swirl down the drain.
Plug the hole.
She’d just wanted a splash, needed to wet her hands, and slap the sleep from her head. She didn’t need to plug the sink to do any of that. Yet the compulsion felt heavy for some reason, so she pulled up the stopper. She watched the basin fill a few inches, then turned off the water.
Whatever you do, protect it, Heather.
That mental voice had sounded like Meyer. Like he was right beside her in this empty bathroom.
Suddenly, intensely, Heather needed to unplug the hole. To unstopper it. To make sure it was never, ever plugged again. The new compulsion was so much heavier than the deep need to stopper the sink, which in itself had been bizarre. It was almost as if she’d plugged it just to see how obviously wrong plugging it was, how the faucet should always be allowed to run as it wished without encumbrance, and how if anyone ever blocked the damn thing, they’d all be fucked.
Still, the compulsion was so strange and so powerful that Heather forced herself to wait a beat, desperate to understand it, rather than allowing it to master her.
Then, another beat.
But … there was nothing.
Trevor’s voice: “Hurry up, Mom!”
She looked up into the mirror and told her reflection, “You’re going crazy down here.”
Heather pushed the plunger down, uncorking the drain. Water swirled away, its rotation ticking off days and minutes and hours like a timepiece. But even the sink looked wrong now, turning her sarcastic self assessment into something with barbs. Why the hell was she staring at the sink? Why was she wary of her own reflection? Why had she been so compelled to stopper the sink then drain it, as if pushed from outside? Maybe she really was going mad. Maybe they all were.
Heather splashed her face, then used one of the towels to dry off. She felt the soft terrycloth against her skin with her eyes closed, wondering how much that one towel had cost. And to think: people were killing each other for scraps above them.
She pulled the towel from her face, but when she did she saw that the towel looked as wrong as the sink had. It was brown, but it had been smudged and blotted with a more intense color in the strange bathroom light: red, like paint.
Heather looked down at the sink, then fell two steps back, covering her mouth to hold in a scream.
The bowl in front of her was filled with blood. Viscous red liquid swirled down the drain, painting the basin walls behind in a murder scene.
She shut her eyes, feeling her mind unhinging.
A few terrifying seconds passed.
With effort, Heather opened her eyes.
The sinks contained only water. Plain old water. The final half inch of clear liquid drained away. The sink itself was clean and unmarred.
Trevor called again, louder.
Heather blinked. But there was nothing wrong with the sink or the towel. There had never been anything wrong. Everything was fine, and always would be.
She sighed, then hung the clean towel on the bar beside the sink.
“All right, all right,” she called back to Trevor, flipping off the light.
But as Heather left the bathroom and headed in with the others, she couldn’t help but feel herself still in the dream, and that what she’d seen with Meyer — whatever it had been — was her true reality, long forgotten.
Chapter Fifteen
“I need to go,” Cameron told the group. “I can’t do what I need to do if I stay here.”
He was speaking to everyone, but mainly addressing Piper — announcing his intentions as if asking permission. Piper couldn’t help but feel flattered. For months, she’d been the bunker’s default leader, but it had been a chore without gratitude. She’d been responsible for everyone, yet nobody thanked her. The simple, acknowledging looks this new man had given her in the week she’d known him almost made up for it. She saw respect in those glances. Appreciation — not for himself, but for what she’d done for the others.
“Okay,” Heather said. “Bon voyage.”
Heather’s hair was wet and plastered to her forehead, as if she’d just washed her face. She looked bleary but fresher than Piper felt right now — than, really, Piper ever felt anymore. Heather had plunked down on the sofa beside Lila. Piper didn’t want to feel jealous and wasn’t, but still there was that small, selfish pang. She’d taken care of Lila over the last few years and had, in a way, kept her alive over the past months. Heather had done nothing. She was an absentee mother, even now that Lila was pregnant. Piper had always felt like a friend rather than a mother figure to the kids, but that feeling had flipped. Now Heather was the buddy, and Piper was the nag Heather had never needed to be.
“I’m not an expert on this stuff,” Cameron continued. “We came here to answer a question about Meyer, but it’s too big and too sprawling. I don’t even know where to start. There’s simply too much I don’t know.”
“Hmm,” Heather added.
Piper looked at Heather. She was phoning it in, present for the departure only because Lila had dragged her from a nap. Clearly, she couldn’t care less, slouched in her chair like a teenager. Almost a generation older than Piper yet a full generation less interested in giving a shit.
“You said you thought you could get him back,” Piper said. It was a hope she’d been holding onto far tighter than she dared admit, even to herself. She was surrounded by people but felt like the planet’s last occupant. Meyer had cheated on her with Heather, but he’d also saved her life. Sometimes, the prospect of his return felt like the only thing that could keep her going.
“No.” Cameron shook his head emphatically. “I didn’t say that. I said I thought we could find out what happened to him. That’s different.”
Piper kept her face neutral, hiding her disappointment.
“The ships have kept The Nine far longer than the others. The questions are why, what these people mean to them, and what the aliens are planning to do with them as part of their grand plan, if they have one. That’s the big puzzle, and it makes everyone nervous. Everywhere we know of that communication has been attempted with the ships has experienced a violent result. They showed up and hung in our skies, but it’s as if they just want to be left alone now that they’re here. But the people at the Moab facility think this — this period of waiting — is a lull before contact is finally made. But if we wait until it’s obvious what those nine people mean, their fear is that it might be too late.”
“Too late in what way?” said Lila, fear in her voice.
“No way to be sure,” Cameron said kindly.
“But why do you need to leave?” Piper asked.
“We’ve done what we can here. Now it’s time to take what we’ve learned to smarter people who can look at the information about Meyer and the others and try to find patterns.”
Piper said, “Why would there be patterns?”
“There are always patterns.” Cameron looked away then sighed as if with heart-weary regret. “I didn’t always believe that was true, but turns out it usually is. See, Benjamin, the guy I mentioned runs the lab in Moab? He just so happens to be my dad. He dragged me everywhere as a kid, searching for evidence to su
pport this fringe nutball theory called ‘Ancient Astronauts.’ It basically says that aliens have been here in the past, doing things like helping humans build pyramids and putting the big stone heads on Easter Island. I played along for a while, thinking it all seemed very exciting to explore and solve mysteries. But as I got a bit older, I decided it was stupid. Because the truth is, if you look long enough with the desire to find something, well, sure enough, you’ll find it.”
“Like what?”
“Like the pyramids of the Giza Plateau maybe. The Ancient Astronauts people say those three pyramids, seen from above, are lined up just like the stars in Orion’s belt. ‘It’s too perfect to be coincidence!’ they’ll say. And then they’ll point out that in the constellation of Orion, the belt draws a line right to Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. And they’ll say, ‘The Giza pyramids line up to point directly at the ancient city of Heliopolis!’ And on and on. Over and over again, people find three ancient things that line up ‘just like Orion’s belt’ and point at ‘something very important.’ But I always thought, ‘They’re only three things. You can find collections of three things anywhere.’”
His eyes ticked toward the wall, where spatters of Morgan Matthews’s blood still stained the paint. He shouted, “Look! Those three smudges are like the stars in Orion’s belt! And hark: they’re pointing directly at the corner, which is the most important part of the wall! That proves aliens have been here!’”
Cameron laughed then shook his head. This was much more information than any of them needed, and Piper saw his verbal meanderings for what they were: something in his past that had meaning — apparently defining meaning — to him. Watching Cameron, Piper couldn’t help her curiosity. There had been nothing but time for talking over the past week, and still they knew precious little about the group’s quietly insightful leader. Cameron had convinced Morgan he was a crazy kid, but clearly he was much more.