“I said, go away!” His double’s only ten feet away. Then five. But it’s not right. Something’s not right. Whack. There’s the sound of wood against skull, an explosion of pain above his right eye; and the feeling of the back of his head bouncing against the damp ground, and then nothing.
A man’s large, sunburned face appears.
Mark’s head throbs. Somewhere high up and out of focus, the trees sway. He reaches up to touch his forehead, the tender lump above his right eye. His glasses are gone. An old-growth fir rises up a few inches from his feet. Its roots are hard under his back. He waves the sunburned man away and says his son’s name. Then he yells it.
“I’m here.” Noah kneels beside him.
Mark sits up and inhales sweet, loamy air. He peers into the forest, but there’s nothing to see. Just trees, earth, and sky. He reaches for Noah and squeezes his arm. His chest swells. He told the Other Mark to go away, and he did.
The man stands up. “I’m Harry.” He’s clean-shaven, with graying hair buzzed close to his pink head. He wears gym shorts and athletic socks pulled up to his knees. His arms are short and muscular.
Mark feels around for his glasses and pine needles prick his fingers. Noah holds them up. “They were like this.”
Harry shakes his head. “You smashed them up good. What the heck were you doing?”
Mark twists his glasses back into an approximate shape and puts them on. A crack in one of the lenses makes the world appear folded over onto itself. “I tripped.”
“Looks to me like you ran headlong into that tree.” Harry juts his thumb at the old-growth fir.
Mark scrubs his forehead, and bits of dirt and bark fall to the ground. The break in his glasses makes Harry’s head look like it’s attached to his waist. “Why would anyone run into a tree?”
“Well, I don’t know why.” He holds out his hand and pulls Mark up from the ground. “Got to be some reason.”
“I’m fine now.”
“I don’t know if you’re fine or not. But I don’t want to stand around gabbing about it.” Harry starts walking away.
“Wait.” Mark calls after him. “What about the hand crank?” Harry’s white socks are already disappearing into the brush.
“Come on,” he says to Noah. “Help me.” He puts one arm around Noah’s shoulder and they hurry after Harry. The way the world bounces through Mark’s cracked glasses makes him feel queasy, but he concentrates on Harry’s socks a few yards ahead of them. Finally Harry pauses in front of a thatch of western hemlock. He elbows his way through the bushes, pulling branches this way and that.
Mark and Noah follow. Beyond the hemlock is a metal door, set into the sloping, moss-covered ground. Harry reaches to turn its circular handle, once, twice, and it moans like an animal in pain. He presses a code into a keypad lock in the door and sets his feet wide to pull the door open with both hands.
He climbs in. Mark prepares to follow, but Noah hangs back. His face is pale. Brambles have torn his uniform at the elbow. “Dad, I want to go home.”
“We will. This will only take a minute.” Mark puts his hand on his son’s back and stands aside so he can climb in first.
But Noah doesn’t move. His eyes shine with fear. “I don’t want to go in there.”
Mark hears a faint hum from the shelter, feels a slight draft from inside. “It’ll be fine. I promise.”
TWENTY-TWO
INSIDE IT’S WARM and dim. Interior noises replace the sounds of the birds and the creaking of the trees: the tummm of a heating vent, the watery whir of a washing machine. Mark steadies himself as the room bounces through his cracked glasses. He smells WD-40 and laundry detergent. Noah stands close, his shoulder pressed against Mark’s side. Metal walls curve around them; the ceiling hovers just above Mark’s head. A large puffy couch sits low to the ground along one wall, and there is a small table and chairs at the far end of the tunnel-like room. Shelves full of objects crisscross the walls.
Harry closes the hatch and locks it. The bolt slides into place with a scrape, sealing them in. He turns to Mark and Noah. Despite the walk through the woods, his socks remain high on his calves. “So.”
“So,” Mark replies. A clipboard hangs on a nail next to the door. A checklist, many pages long. Mark has been working on some checklists himself. He closes his left eye and tries to read the page from where he stands.
Harry points at Noah. “Your boy’s bleeding.”
Mark adjusts his glasses. He’s right—Noah has an angry scrape along his jaw.
“I’m fine,” Noah says.
“He needs to wash out that abrasion. Put some Neosporin on it.” Harry’s sunburned face is serious.
“Thanks. If you’ve got some.”
“You don’t have any with you.”
“Ah, no.”
Harry points at the sofa. “Why don’t you sit there.” He walks to the rear of the tunnel, past two sets of bunk beds made up with white sheets and wool blankets. He goes around a corner.
Neither of them sits down. Noah stays close to the hatch and Mark reaches above his head to touch the curved ceiling. On the shelves are canned foods and paper towels and batteries—AA, AAA, C, D, E. Tight, dark rolls of bedding, a shiny tool chest, three shovels. Sandbags, each the color and size of a fat hare. Binoculars and fishing poles. Jumbo tubs of bleach and a portable kerosene heater. A thick nest of bungee cords and zip ties.
“We don’t need a lock like this, do we?” Noah peers at the keypad lock in the door, a flat silver box with tiny yellow buttons.
“No, why would we need that?”
“I don’t know.” His voice wavers. “Why would we need that?”
“We wouldn’t.”
“Why does this guy need it?”
“Because he’s—” Mark lowers his voice. “Because he’s not like us.”
“You mean, he’s—”
Harry reappears with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a metal tin containing tufts of cotton, a tube of Neosporin, and a few Band-Aids. “Thanks so much,” Mark says a little too loudly.
“You’ll need the sink first,” Harry says to Noah. He points the way he came. “To the right.”
Noah looks at his dad.
Mark nods and smiles to show him there’s nothing to be afraid of. “Yeah, sure. He’s right. Wash it out first.”
Noah moves slowly to the back of the shelter and a few seconds later Mark hears water running.
Harry asks him if he wants a beer.
“Sure.” It’s the middle of the day, but he guesses no is the wrong answer.
Harry nods and walks to the rear of the shelter again.
Mark notices a gas mask on the shelf above the table and chairs. He hesitates, and then picks it up. He squeezes his left eye shut so he can read its orange label. It’s in Hebrew, but a tag stapled to its elastic strap is printed in English.
Export Sensitive Item: This item has been identified as potentially requiring formal authorization or licensing to export under U.S. government export control laws, including but not limited to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and the Export Administration Regulations (EAR).
He’s about to try it on when Noah returns from the bathroom, drying his hands on his shirt. “There’s like twenty guns back there,” he whispers.
“There are not twenty guns.” Mark replaces the mask on the shelf and steps toward the rear of the T-shaped shelter. He peeks down each end. To the right a door stands ajar; inside is a large metal sink and a toilet with a fuzzy blue cover. To the left, a rack of guns. His stomach lurches. Five rifles, their wood sides polished and gleaming, stand upright. Two handguns, as glossy as mink, hang on hooks, their black muzzles pointed to the floor. Past the guns is a small kitchen, where Harry stoops in front of a refrigerator.
Mark creeps back to his son. He picks up t
he peroxide and dabs Noah’s cheek.
“Ouch.”
“You’re fine. Everything is going to be fine.” He opens a Band-Aid with a picture of Spider-Man on it. “We used to have these,” he says absently.
“Does he have kids?”
“No,” Mark says quickly. He glances at the two bunk beds. “I mean, if he does, I’m sure they’re all grown up.”
Harry comes back holding a laundry basket full of clean clothes, with two IPAs tucked inside. He holds out the basket and Mark takes one of the beers. Harry sits down on the couch and begins folding gray underpants, the same kind Mark buys in a twelve-pack from Costco. “So you’re a friend of Lee’s.”
“Not a friend, exactly. I met him at The Great Outdoors Store.”
“And you’re building a bunker.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Mark takes a sip of his beer. He doesn’t want to answer.
Noah points to the Band-Aid stuck to his jaw. “Do you have a kid?”
Harry shakes out a white T-shirt and folds it carefully. “My grandson used to live with me.” His eyes focus on the shirt in his lap. He lays it carefully beside him.
“Where did he go?”
“Noah, we don’t need to ask—”
“You’re familiar,” Harry says to Noah. He picks up another shirt. “You play baseball?”
“Yeah, and soccer. And basketball.”
Harry nods. “Basketball’s a good game for you. You’re tall.” He sets the shirt on the pile. “I coached T-ball when I was the PE teacher at Pascal School.”
“You taught elementary school?” Mark doesn’t know why he’s surprised—the man looks exactly like a gym teacher.
“I go to Niels Bohr,” Noah says.
Harry taps his finger to his forehead. “We played your team a few times. I remember you were fast, with a decent arm.” He looks at Mark when he says this.
“He gets that from his mother.”
Harry nods, and then points across the room. “Got a dartboard over there,” he tells Noah. “Let’s see what you can do.”
While Noah throws darts, Harry asks Mark again: Why is he building a bunker? It’s the same question Ginny asked him yesterday. He didn’t answer then, and he doesn’t want to answer now. But he suspects the question, like the one about the beer, is a test. Harry’s deciding whether he deserves the hand crank he’s come to buy. And because he needs that crank, he takes off his glasses and says, in a low voice, “I had a dream. A very vivid dream. In the dream my family was in danger. Something awful was about to happen, and I was the only one who could protect them.”
Harry’s red face draws closer to Mark’s. “What was going to happen?”
Mark shakes his head. “I don’t know.”
“Something awful, but you don’t know what.” Harry passes his hand over his face. “That’s the rub, isn’t it. The not knowing.”
Their eyes meet and Mark feels that, even though he hasn’t told Harry the whole story, even though they couldn’t be more different, this stranger might understand him better than anyone in the world.
Noah has thrown all the darts into the cork and steps up to retrieve them.
“That’s why we’ve got to prepare,” Harry says and Mark nods in agreement. “That’s what I keep telling Muriel—that’s my ex-wife. She thinks I’m nuts.”
“I don’t think it’s crazy to have a plan.” Mark puts his glasses back on, and Harry’s head wobbles above his torso.
“That’s why I do a lot of reading,” Harry says. “A whole lot of reading. Someone like yourself will appreciate that. Because we’ve got to be equipped for all the possibilities. Natural disasters. Nuclear or chemical attacks. Biological warfare. A terrorist attack on our water supply, for example. These are the things that keep me up at night.” Harry presses his hands together. “And I’ll tell you what really terrifies me…what really shrivels my balls? An electromagnetic pulse that fries every electrical circuit in the U.S. All that North Korea has to do is detonate a nuclear missile in the atmosphere above America and set off a shock wave of electricity. And then we’re toast.
“Can you imagine?” Harry continues. “No cellphones, no computers. Half the population would be dead in a matter of months from starvation or disease.” His voice is getting louder and Noah looks over from the darts. “It’ll be every man for himself. That’s why I’ve outfitted this space with low-tech backup systems. If a pulse happens, I’m not going to be caught with my pants down.”
Mark doesn’t know exactly what’s going to happen. What exactly the Other Mark is warning him about. But he feels certain it isn’t going to be an electromagnetic pulse. Or anything to do with North Korea. He repositions his glasses on his face. “Doesn’t it make more sense to put your energies toward the most probable disasters? Volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis…” he says gently. “Statistically speaking, they’re much more likely than a terrorist attack in the middle of Oregon.”
“You’re thinking like a scientist. I get it. But I’m not about that. I go with my gut. And my gut tells me I need to worry about everything.” The tendons in his neck bulge.
“If we lived on the East Coast, or in a big city—”
Harry pounds his fist into his knee. “I mean, everything.” A wild expression crosses his face, and for a moment, he does look crazy. “Every goddamn thing.”
And then the expression disappears; his shoulders tip toward the laundry basket at his feet and his muscly body goes soft. “My wife didn’t like worrying about everything. She said it was exhausting.”
Mark reaches out to pat Harry’s shoulder, even though the gesture feels strange. “By any estimation, we’re in the best possible spot for staying safe from all sorts of things.” He aims at a reassuring tone. “Climate change, war, disease. The only real danger is from the earth itself. From the tectonic plates underneath us.”
“Yeah.” Harry doesn’t sound convinced. He picks up a stack of folded shirts and puts them into the laundry basket. “Is that what you are? A seismologist?”
“Oh, no. I’m a behavioral ecologist. My current project investigates how geothermal changes in ground water affect the behavior of the northwestern spotted frog…”
But Harry doesn’t seem to be listening. He looks at the hatch, as if to check if it’s still shut tight. “You married?”
Mark nods.
“Your wife on board with your plans?”
Mark hesitates, and then admits, “Not exactly.”
Harry nods; he looks like he expected this answer. He picks up the laundry basket. “Let me grab that crank for you.”
Mark can’t remember what he was going to say about his research ponds. He eyes the four bunks, the shelves packed with food, the massive brown plastic water tank as tall and broad as a black bear. He wants to know more about Harry’s ex-wife. He wants to ask him if she left him before or after he built this bunker, before or after he started living down here, under the ground.
Harry returns with a shrink-wrapped package containing the hand crank, and waves Mark off when he tries to pay for it. “Nah, just take it.”
Mark thanks him and Harry shakes his hand firmly.
“I don’t go into town much, but if you need help with your installation, give me a call.” He shakes Noah’s hand too. “You take care of yourself, and your boy.” He opens the hatch door, and Mark and Noah climb back out into the damp air.
TWENTY-THREE
GINNY PARKS HER car in front of Niels Bohr Elementary, a brick building with a shallow roof and a throng of bicycles crowding its double front doors. This time on a Saturday afternoon she would normally be at her office catching up on paperwork and emails. A heap of stuff covers her desk—a paper that’s overdue to the Journal of General Surgery, a stack of unread resident evaluations, a folder full of staff contra
cts that need her signature. She’s at least a week behind on her dictations. But she needs to be here, at Noah’s soccer game. With her son, and with Mark. She’s been too absent.
Outside the air smells like wet pavement. She pulls her hood up, opens her trunk, and finds her rain boots and a folding chair. She balances on one foot, and then the other, to take off her clogs and pull on her boots. She hears the bleep of whistles from behind the school.
Niels Bohr looks exactly the same as the last time she was here. There’s no evidence it’s been closed for mold remediation for a week. Mark told her which rooms were affected but now she can’t remember. The soccer fields are a mess of muddy, neon-green grass. Noah’s game is on the field closest to the trees. Beyond that, the mountain rises up, dark green and ringed with haze. Its snowy split top nudges the gray sky.
She walks past the other games, past the buzzing energy of hovering, rain-jacketed parents and the too-serious faces of the coaches. When she finds the right field, she stops at the sideline. The two teams warm up on opposite sides of the field, the Monarchs in blue jerseys on the right and the Aphids in red on the left. The players’ heads bob and dart as they balance balls on their knees and bounce them off the insides of their ankles.
She looks for her son’s number, 14. At the shriek of a whistle, Noah’s friends Peter and Gus move toward the center of the field, and their knee-socked legs shuffle in the wet grass as they form a circle around their coach: 8, 10, 4, but no 14.
A group of parents sits under the trees, their backs to the mountain. Mark ought to be there, sitting in a folding chair that matches Ginny’s, his feet resting on a cooler with Noah’s water bottle and some peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches inside. But he isn’t. Seneca’s father—she can’t remember his name—stands close to the sideline with his hands aloft, ready to clap. Ginny nods at him and he smiles uncertainly, like he can’t remember who she is. “Let’s gooooo, Monarchs!” he yells.
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