by Holly Hook
I let Jerome get in the chair. I had never heard the guy speak much, but he pulled down a browsing history from the top of the error screen.
"These scientists like to surf, all right," Jerome said. "That means they normally have the Web. Ohhh. That looks like a porn site."
David laughed, but it was nervous. "So the whole Internet is fried, too. I hope this is just a local thing. Like I said, EMP."
We had been down here without Dr. Shetlin for several minutes. "I have to get out of here," I said, sliding towards the door.
I had to push right past Christina, who didn't give me any crap on the way out. She was being very, very quiet. The elevator doors remained closed. Dr. Shetlin was either going for her kids or she was keeling over from dangerous space particles, throwing up blood.
No one else was coming down. It was a bad sign.
I didn't want to imagine the scene up in the lobby.
But in order to escape this place, we would have to face it sooner or later, unless Dr. Shetlin could find some crew to clean up the mess and sanitize the carpets before we got there. I felt horrible for having the thought.
Everyone else settled in the computer room, taking advantage of the comfortable chairs. My feet were on fire. I stood there against the stone, without Alana and without David.
All I could think of was Dad up on his airplane, or in his hotel high off the ground, exposed to the cosmic rays.
Dad drinking his Tim Hortons coffee.
Dad, the only parent I had left.
I couldn't take it any more. I had to get to the surface, start that bus myself if I needed, and drive us to civilization. I'd had my learner's permit for four months now. I got up and headed to the elevator.
"Laney!" Alana shouted, bursting out of the computer room. "What are you doing?"
"I'm not staying here," I said. "My dad's out there."
"We need to stick together." She got in front of me and the elevator.
I wanted to push her away with all my might. I wanted to shove her into the wall. "My dad is out there."
"So is mine," Alana said. "My parents are both out there and my little brother is, too." There were tears in her eyes. "If it's as bad as what Mr. Ellis says, we're better off down here for a bit."
"It's been half an hour. Dr. Shetlin's still not back."
"We're in the boonies. She won't be."
"I get it. What if she doesn't come back--ever?" I didn't want to be alone in the world. I couldn't be. Dad was all I had left and he was up there with those cosmic rays if New York had been blasted along with Arizona.
Alana grabbed my arms. "Laney," she said. "You're my friend and I'm not letting you go up there yet. She told us to wait for a few hours. I think we should."
I sighed. Her grip tightened as I moved to go around her. The elevator was still. I couldn't stand this anymore. The not knowing was the worst.
"Laney," she repeated. "Wait with us. We won't stay down here forever. It's not like there's anything we can do about this situation." Alana wrapped her arms around me. I recoiled and she loosened her grip. "Sorry," she said. "I forgot you don't like hugging."
I hadn't liked hugging since the funeral. There were too many feelings involved. No one had ever hugged me for a good reason. It was always because of grief, because of loss or because of fear. Maybe it was even because someone was wishing you good luck on something you were nervous about, which just made the entire thing worse. This was no exception.
"It's okay," I lied. "I'll wait, but if we don't hear anything in a couple more hours, I'm calling that elevator and we're headed back up."
"I don't think we will hear anything," Alana said. "It's just...if they're right we need to wait for the radiation to die down. Going up and dying isn't going to help our families."
"If it's even there," I said. I knew I was fooling myself. Of course something deadly was up there, or had been. I thought about my guinea pig at home, Chester. I'd fed him this morning, scratched him on the head, and left for school with my permission note in hand, signed by Dad a full week ago.
My skin burned a bit.
Had the radiation crept down towards us? Maybe it slowly worked through the stone and was just now getting here, even though I knew that couldn't make a whole lot of sense. "Alana," I said. "Are you feeling okay?"
She nodded. "I think I have a bit of a sunburn, but that's all. We were out in a desert."
"You're normally tan," I said.
I held up my arms. They were pink like I had spent a few hours at the beach. A sunburn. "You think the flash of light did this?" I asked. Mr. Ellis had been red. Swollen. I was a bit pink, but I rubbed my arms only to feel a bit of the familiar burn.
"It could have," Alana said. "I'm sure there were a lot of those rays that burn skin. What do you call those?"
"Ultraviolet," I said. "The ones that aren't good for us."
I blinked and a bunch of lopsided brown moles spread out in front of my eyes like little deadly flowers on skin. Mom shouted at me to wear sunscreen all the time the minute she got diagnosed. I had to wear it at all times except for the night. Death was outside in the light, beaming down from the sun. I had forgotten to bring it today in my rush to get to the field trip bus on time.
I had spent so much time protecting myself from the sun that I hadn't realized another star could be a danger.
"It's just a sunburn," Alana said.
"You haven't seen what they can do," I told her.
Chapter Four
I waited the couple hours that Alana wanted me to.
No one spoke much in the computer room. We had been down here for what felt like four or five hours by now, including the tour that was probably our final field trip. Dr. Shetlin hadn't given us any signs of returning.
I got out of my computer chair. My stomach wanted to heave, but there was nothing inside of it. Then it rumbled with hunger. The school had promised to take us out for lunch at some coney place in a nearby town when the trip was over and we were way overdue.
"Anyone ready to go up?" David asked before I could. "I think we've waited long enough. If the second group was still alive, they would have come down by now."
"What if people are looting up there?" Jerome asked.
"What is there to loot?" Mina asked. "The vending machine?"
The vending machine sounded great right about now. My stomach rumbled again. My legs quivered. I had forgotten to eat breakfast that morning in a rush to get to school early.
"The vending machine," I said. "I don't care what's in it, even if it's Diet Coke."
"Diet Coke is good," David told me.
"There are chemicals in it that can cause...health problems," I said. I realized what I was saying.
"There are a lot of things up there that can cause health problems right now," Christina said. "Think for once."
"Hey," Jerome said to her. "We're all stressed. Please, let's not take things out on each other like this." He stepped in between her and me a little like he was trying to shield us from each other. It was probably a good idea. “Let’s get up the elevator. We waited like the doctor wanted us to. I haven't seen that one guy. I don't know what happened to him."
“There could still be deadly radiation,” Mina said. “What if it doesn’t stop?”
David shrugged. The spotlight was on him. “Then we’re going to find out. We can’t stay in this mine forever. If the generators down here run out, there’s no way back up. And they must have generators down here."
Terror squeezed its way into my heart, making it race. The thought of being trapped down here…just no. I raced for the elevator. Were the lights flickering?
I punched the call button. The elevator hummed and I sighed in relief. David was right that we couldn’t wait down here forever. If the radiation was going to get us, it was going to get us. Dr. Shetlin hadn’t told us how long the power would last without people to man them. I looked behind me to see if the other scientist had come out, but this was empty. The doors to th
e tunnel were locked and there was no way we could look for the guy.
After a long, tense few minutes, the elevator doors opened.
The smell.
It was already starting. The odor wafted out of the box as Mr. Ellis continued to lie there. He was still swollen and his face was turned away and the blood around his head had turned a dark brownish color. It had dried. That old song started playing through my head, that one about the reaper. I shook my head, trying to clear it, but it stuck there, getting louder and louder.
“We need to drag Mr. Ellis out,” Jerome said, pushing around me to look.
Vomit rose in my throat and I turned away, gagging.
“We have to,” Jerome said. “We can’t ride the elevator with him in there.”
He was right. I didn’t want to return to the surface with a dead body. Someone else coughed. It might have been one of the art girls. They hung back, trying not to look. I knew that feeling. No one wanted to look at dead bodies. You found something else to look at, like a painting on the wall or the pattern on the floor, only there was nothing here but rock that might be our tomb if we didn’t move.
Jerome got in front of me. The look on his face was numb. He was a mask. He waved Tony closer and grabbed Mr. Ellis’s arm. The two of them dragged him out, grunting the whole time. He was dead weight. Literally. At last, they had placed him at the end of the hallway, right at the junction between the main room and the mine.
And he'd left a faint, crusty blood trail. I turned away.
“We can’t leave him down here,” Mina said. “What about his family?”
David coughed. “We don’t know if they’re alive.”
It was funny, worrying about one body now that I look back at it. Mr. Ellis was only the second one I had seen. When and if the power went out, Mr. Ellis would lie in the dark until we got someone down here to recover him. The funeral might have to be closed casket. At least his folks wouldn’t have to look at him in such a bad state.
If anyone ever came down for him.
But the elevator was clear now save for the puddle of dried blood. We boarded. I couldn’t even notice the smell now. I had heard from Mom that you could get used to bad smells and not notice them as much. It worked for her when she did long shifts at the pickle factory. She used to be bothered by the smell of brine, but after a while, she didn’t notice it anymore.
The doors closed on Mr. Ellis, leaving him in the dark.
The elevator lights flickered as it did.
“Smart decision,” one of the art girls told David. “We had better hope the power stays on long enough to get us to the surface.”
The elevator rose and my stomach dropped. We were all silent. We could be heading up into the deadly cloud of radiation, but we had to take the risk. Mr. Ellis got farther and farther away as we rose, passing rock and strata. The elevator’s hum remained steady, then faded a bit, then remained steady again. If the power failed, we would plummet to our deaths or hang here for the rest of time, to die a slow and horrible death. I was thirsty. Hungry.
And that guy might still be underground...
At last, after what felt like an eternity, the steel double doors dropped in front of the elevator and we stopped.
“We made it,” Alana breathed.
Some people cheered. I think I did, too. We had escaped the underground. Was I getting sick? Mr. Ellis had died quickly, maybe even within an hour. I listened for anything outside the double doors, but there was nothing. It was all silence.
The doors opened halfway and the hum around us died. The light flickered and went dead.
The power had gone out. I sucked in some air, but the elevator swung, remaining in place.
The room ahead of us was dark, but the smell was unmistakable. I wrinkled my nose.
"Yuck," Alana said.
I guess she was trying to dismiss the situation, but it didn’t work. Everyone went silent again and Tony grabbed the elevator door, wrenching it all the way open.
The odor hit us full force. It came with a renewed fury. I gagged and this time, I couldn’t help but retch something up. I leaned over and threw up into the crack between the elevator and the mine shaft. It wasn't much, thankfully.
“Laney,” Alana said. She grabbed the back of my shirt. “Hold your breath. Put your nose in your shirt, or something.” She sounded dry and numb. “We need to get out of this elevator.”
It trembled a bit and I jumped out, along with everyone else. We stampeded out of the prison box and into the dark room. The light was strange. That was the second thing that registered. It still poured through the windows, but it was a different color. Reddish, almost, and weaker.
My foot hit something soft and I screamed.
“Don’t look!” David shouted. “No one look down.”
I didn’t have to. There was no point denying what any of this was.
The other tour group had fallen here and died like Mr. Ellis said. The radiation had claimed a lot of victims.
Who was in the other group? There was Shelli from the honor society. I thought I caught a glimpse of her purple Hello Kitty backpack on the floor.
Don’t look.
Count to five.
I inhaled the stale air under my shirt and breathed in.
Five. Five. Always five.
That number was safe.
Thirty-nine and twenty-seven were dangerous.
I took a step over the lump on the floor that was definitely not a body. I breathed in the air that was definitely not full of death.
I had to get outside. Going back underground was not an option now.
"Go," David said. "Everyone. Don't look down and get outdoors."
I stepped over another lump. Count to five. Safe, safe, safe.
The front door was shut. The receptionist lady was lying across the counter, her computer off and her cell phone under her waxy hand. The smell intensified. We were going to suffocate in here. The phone was off. It had a nice pink cover on it with metallic flowers. It was something Mom would have loved.
"What about the radiation?" Christina asks.
"I feel fine," David said. "It might be over."
"Dude, with radiation you can feel fine at first," Jerome said.
"You know about radiation?" David whirled on him, face red like some demon's.
We were all talking about everything except for what was lying in the room. I passed the vending machine. Someone was slumped against it. I dared to look. Blood had run out of the guy's nose and down onto his chest. I didn't recognize the kid at first. His face was puffed like a million bees had stung him.
Josh.
I breathed out.
Twenty seconds. Not safe.
I bolted for the door.
"Laney!" Alana shouted. "We don't know what's out there." Her feet trampled the carpet and hit something muffled.
They were all dead. Gone. Everyone left on the surface had succumbed to the same kind of radiation that took my mother. Now the monster had come back and taken almost everyone else.
I screamed and threw open the front door. I let it slam against the outside of the building as a chill washed over me. It was reddish out here. The sky was wrong. I stood under the awning and breathed in the fresh air.
"Laney!" Alana was there, holding my shoulders. "Go ahead. Scream all you want. I'm not going to stop you. In fact, I might join you." She laughed. It was crazy. We were all going insane here.
I sucked in a breath. The radiation could still be raining from the sky, splicing through all my cells while I stood here. I wondered how long it would take to die and how much it would hurt. It wouldn't be painless. I wondered if there was some way to make it end faster. My heart raced. Was I okay or was the radiation already making me sick? We still weren't sure what happened.
"God," David said, coming out of the building behind us.
I hadn't realized I was staring at the dusty parking lot at first, or that it wasn't right that there was a chill in the air. I looked up.
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We stood in an alien world.
The sky was a dull, reddish-brown color as if a layer of smog had spread over the entire planet. Dull, listless clouds hung high in the air, maybe even higher than airplanes flew. The sun was a pale sphere struggling to shine through the muck. That was the best word I could think of to describe it. Sky muck.
"Nuclear winter," David said. "We just had a nuclear war." Behind me, everyone muttered as they struggled to push out of the dead building.
"We don't know," Mina said. "We should get back in and shut the door. What if this is poison gas?"
I backpedaled, as much as I didn't want to go back into the Visitor Center turned morgue. She was right. We didn't know if there was poison gas out there. The sky looked bad enough.
"Wait," Christina's friend said. "I can't stay in here. This is disgusting. Please let us go outside!"
Mina slapped her. "The air might not be safe."
"If it's not safe, then it's already in here," Jerome said. "We're already dead, in that case. Does anyone feel sick?"
My stomach heaved. It might just be the smell. It might just be the stress. But...I didn't know. I was going to throw up again and acid burned at the back of my throat.
"I'm fine," I lied. "How about everyone else?"
"Well, besides the fact that there are about twenty bodies in here, I'm okay," Mina said. "I really think we should take the risk outside."
These people were fighting and falling apart. I couldn't stay here. Dad was still out there and he was the only thing I had left now. He'd been the only thing I had since last year. What difference did it make now? If the world really had ended, it was only a matter of time before the rest of the tour group keeled over and died. I couldn't maintain that hope that we'd all band together and everything could be okay. It was clear that things might never be okay again.
The sky was red. Wasn't that some Biblical doomsday prophecy or something? It was something like that. I had never really believed anything one way or the other, especially after last year.
"We don't know what's outside," David said. "Everyone. Remove these bodies so we can at least stay in here for a little longer." We were all crowded near the door.