by McBain, Tim
At last satisfied it was nothing yet again, he’d let his head sink back to the warmth of its resting place.
The sizzle of the rain against the blacktop waxed and waned as the hours passed, its volume knob seemingly pushed up and down by the whims of the sky, but its hiss never died out completely.
It always took time for his heartbeat to slow after waking up scared like he did. Always took several minutes for sleep to draw near again.
He wasn’t all the way under when something thudded against the glass of the passenger side window. And he knew right away that this thump was different from the others.
Loud. Solid. Heavy.
Not any dream.
When he opened his eyes, he could see it: a face through the glass.
Erin
Rich Creek, Virginia
9 years, 36 days after
Erin bashed at the mortar with the claw side of a hammer. Flecks of cement chipped away and fell to the floor. Puffs of red dust flared when she missed the thin gray line and grazed a brick instead.
It wasn’t exactly a delicate task, and she couldn’t stop thinking that she’d have much better luck with a chisel. But this was the best they’d been able to scrounge up after searching the rest of the basement and the garage for tools. All in all, trying to smash her way in with the hammer was only proving marginally more effective than what Izzy was trying to do.
Off to the left, Izzy whacked at the bricks with a shovel, swinging it like a baseball bat. She’d started out trying to pry the bricks loose with a crowbar, but had given that up in favor of trying to brute strength her way in. Izzy stopped every two or three swings, shaking the sting out of her wrists and forearms.
“Shock goes all the way up to the shoulder sometimes,” she said, massaging at one of her scrawny deltoids.
She leaned on the shovel a minute. Erin could tell by the look on her face that she was about to talk, to ask one of her classic Izzy questions that always led to ten more questions.
“So you’re saying this dude bricked himself inside there, like a decade ago,” Izzy said. “With a bunch of guns and ammo.”
Erin answered between hammer blows.
“That’s my theory.”
“So won’t he, like, shoot us when we come barging in?”
Erin stopped swinging.
“I don’t think he could have stored nine years worth of food and water inside. The bomb shelters in those pamphlets weren’t very big. They weren’t made to be lived in indefinitely.” She mopped her sleeve over her brow, a bead of sweat sluicing down her cheek. “If he were still alive, he’d have come out by now. Probably years ago.”
“So, best case scenario, this is a tomb. With, like, a prepper mummy inside. All dried out.”
Izzy shuddered at her own words. Then she smiled. When she spoke again, her tone turned from solemn to excited.
“We’re grave robbers! That’s kind of awesome. Well, unless he managed to put a curse on all his stuff, like the ancient Egyptians. Then we’ll probably die horrible deaths.”
Izzy was obsessed with ancient Egypt. It had started when Erin found a copy of The Egypt Game in one of the houses, years ago now. Since then, Izzy had amassed an impressive collection of books, photographs, and collectibles on their scavenging outings.
“Did I tell you about the mummy that was on the Titanic?” Izzy asked. “Actually, the last book I read said that’s only a myth, but—”
Erin threw the hammer down, and the sound of it striking the concrete floor echoed through the basement. Izzy stopped talking and stared at her, eyes wide.
Breath heaved in and out of Erin’s chest. She glared at the floor. Tried to will the red tint at the edge of her vision to die back.
“What?” Izzy said finally, her voice small.
“This isn’t going to work. Not with these tools.” Erin picked at the soggy neckline of her shirt. “We’re both drenched in sweat, and we haven’t loosened a single brick. We’ve been at this for almost an hour.”
Izzy reached out and pressed a hand against the wall, as if she might be able to push the whole thing over.
“Yeah. It’s pretty sturdy, huh?” she said, wrinkling her nose. “We could head home for the night. Come back tomorrow with the right tools.”
“I guess,” Erin said, staring down at one of the small lanterns they’d brought in to give them some light to work by.
“Kinda nuts that he bricked himself in there in the first place,” Izzy went on. “I mean, it seems like you’d want some way to get out. An escape hatch or something, right?”
Erin’s mouth popped open. Her gaze swept up from the floor. Locked with Izzy’s.
“Now what?” Izzy said.
And then Erin was running. Back through the basement. Up the stairs.
She kicked through the trash in the kitchen and hallway and descended upon the pile of glossy magazines in the living room. It was darker in here now, the daylight fading rapidly. She could just see enough to make out the pamphlets.
She scooped them up. Pinned the haphazard pile of them to her chest and rushed back down stairs.
She knelt down beside the lanterns and laid them out. Studying the images again.
Once she flipped past the creepy family photos, the pamphlets each depicted schematics of three different models of bunker. Erin smiled as she took in the details.
“You’re a genius, kid.”
She tapped her finger at the page, and Izzy looked down, forehead crinkling.
The diagrams landed somewhere between blueprints and cartoons, mapping out the basic features in black and white. Two of the available models featured a hatch entry on top of the capsule in addition to the standard basement entry.
“Odds are, there is another way out… or in.”
Both of their heads turned to look at the shovel at Izzy’s feet.
Izzy
Rich Creek, Virginia
9 years, 36 days after
Whoever had gone through the house before them had upended the contents of the dresser drawers onto the king size bed in the master bedroom. Izzy grabbed the four corners of the comforter and wrapped the whole pile of random crap into a giant bundle.
She groaned under the weight of it and only barely managed to heave the sack into the corner of the room before losing her grip on it.
With the bed cleared of the litter, there was just enough room to lay out their sleeping bags side by side.
Just as she finished her task, Erin came in with dinner: acorn crackers, dried strawberries, fish jerky, and for a treat, an ancient Baby Ruth candy bar they’d found in one of the houses today. It was smushed, and the peanuts tasted kind of stale, but chocolate was a rarity these days. It was a fun size bar, barely more than one bite for each of them, and she savored that single mouthful for as long as she could.
“Tastes like Halloween,” Erin said.
Izzy sighed.
“I miss Halloween.”
“We do Halloween every year.”
“I mean old Halloween,” Izzy said. “Dressing up at school. Donuts and cider. Hayrides. Trick or treating and ending up with a whole pillowcase full of candy and then eating so much you almost barf.”
“Yeah.” Erin smiled. “Old Halloween was pretty rad.”
She stood and went to the window. It was almost full dark now.
“I want to be up at dawn to start digging, so we should probably turn in,” Erin said, stooping to her pack and removing her toothbrush.
Izzy smacked her lips.
“I wish I didn’t have to brush my teeth so I could keep the lingering Halloween taste in my mouth all night.”
Erin paused with her toothbrush protruding from the corner of her mouth.
“Gross.”
“How is that gross?” Izzy asked.
Erin resumed brushing.
“It just is.”
Izzy scoffed, pulling her own toothbrush and commencing with the deed.
A few minutes later, they were nestled in.
Two faces staring up at the ceiling. Watching the blackness settle over the room. Nylon polyester blends pulled up to just under the chins, blue and green respectively.
The light seemed to vent through the windows as though exhaled. Fresh gloom sucked in to take its place. A gray murkiness that turned slowly into solid nothingness.
It was weirdly comforting, Izzy thought. That little slice of oblivion that arrived at the end of each day, painting in shades of black to erase the universe for a little while — at least until the dawn could paint it all anew. Relaxing in a way. Part of the routine.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Soreness touched the arches of her feet, the backs of her thighs. So much riding today. She should be exhausted, she knew. They both should.
The excitement of the waiting bomb shelter was too much to overcome, though. Izzy felt it like an electric current running through her. Burning bright. Closing her eyes for more than a few seconds seemed absurd.
There was a big box buried out in the backyard that might as well be gift-wrapped. Who knew what it held? Secrets. Surprises. Mysteries.
It was like trying to fall sleep the night before Christmas when she’d been little. Unable to stop envisioning the endless goodies piled under the tree.
She tossed and turned for twenty or thirty minutes before she spoke.
“Erin.” She said it in a whisper even though she was certain Erin was just as awake as she was, equally afflicted by visions of sugar plums and automatic rifles and all that.
“What?”
“Are you, like, asleep?”
“Deeply.”
“I was thinking. If neither of us can sleep, maybe we should just, you know, have at it.”
Erin was quiet for a second. Then Izzy could hear her sit up.
“You mean go dig now? In the dark?”
Izzy’s face flushed. It sounded dumb once Erin had said it out loud, but then she heard the telltale slither of Erin’s limbs sliding out of her sleep sack.
“Let’s go,” Erin said.
By the time Erin led the way out into the backyard, it was full dark out. The moon and stars fought the blackness, but they could only do so much.
Izzy held her hand out into patch of moonlight where it touched the vinyl siding. Extended her arm slowly so it looked like the glow crept over her palm and onto her fingertips. She wiggled her fingers, watched their elongated shadow versions dance on the wall.
Based on the dimensions listed in the sales pamphlets and the location of the bricked-up doorway, they figured the hatch would sit roughly in the middle of the yard. With the depth of the bricked basement doorway as another guideline, they estimated the hatch to be about three or four feet underground. That didn’t seem like so much, Izzy thought.
It seemed a bit more significant after twenty minutes of shoveling, however. When it came to her turn with the shovel, Izzy couldn’t help but feel like she was only spooning away a handful of dirt at a time. The effort somehow managed to slick her forehead with sweat despite how paltry the result seemed.
She knelt nearby as Erin took the next shift. Watching by the trickle of light the pair of lanterns gave off as Erin jabbed at the ground. Stomped on the beveled metal step. Wedged the blade into the earth with a faint scraping sound. Then scooping and flicking the dirt away.
The closest lantern was turned down to the lowest possible setting — just enough to see by — in case someone happened near them. In the low light, Izzy couldn’t really see the dirt as it left the shovel. It seemed to explode into the air like mist. Disappearing.
She could hear it, though. The way it sprinkled down, pattering against the sod, the big pieces hitting first.
The initial excitement of rushing out here in the dark seeped away as the time stretched on. All things seemed to reduce down to the rhythm of the shovel striking the ground and then flinging the dirt away. There was something hypnotic about it. A lulling effect that seemed to hold sway over even Izzy’s heartbeat. Slowing it. Bringing it into time with itself.
The cool of the night crept into Izzy’s arms and legs as she sat and watched. Made her shiver now and again.
Izzy took another turn digging, finding the action less cathartic than she’d imagined, less satisfying. The activity warmed her, though. Heated her from the inside out, her core turned into a furnace kicking out feverish waves that spread down the lengths of her limbs.
Soon sweat sheened on all of her. Dimly glittering in that filmy light flowing out of the lantern.
When she tired, Erin stepped in again, taking the shovel. And once again Izzy sat on the sidelines, listening to that endless scrape and sprinkle.
They took turns like that for around two hours. Each one working hard enough to get themselves out of breath and then handing the shovel off.
And the bucket-sized hole turned to a trough, and the trough turned to a gaping black maw that took up a significant chunk of the backyard.
Izzy stared down into the black hole. Tried to make sense of nothingness. Empty space. The dirt lay down there somewhere, but she couldn’t see it. Felt more like gazing into the void.
Then the moon emerged from the clouds. And suddenly they could see their handiwork much better, that textured earthy bottom forming where the sandy layer of soil disrupted the overgrown sod.
The fresh visual heartened Izzy. She didn’t think it’d be much longer now. Whatever this buried metal chamber held, it’d be theirs soon.
The work continued. Izzy’s shoulders started to ache. Then the tendrils of pain snaked downward, threading into her forearms.
At some point, she stopped thinking of it as a hole and started thinking of it as a pit.
She sipped water out of her canteen. Not really realizing how long it’d been since either of them had spoken until after the words were out of her mouth.
“You really don’t think they’re down there still? Alive, I mean?”
Erin flung another shovelful before she answered.
“No way. Even if they did have enough food and water to last that long, could you stay locked in a single room for nine or ten years?”
Izzy hadn’t thought about it that way. Soon after another thought followed.
“Oh man… what if he bricked himself in, but after a few months he changed his mind and wanted out? But what if he hadn’t brought any tools or anything, so he was just, you know, trapped in there?”
“You mean what if he The-Cask-of-Amontillado-ed himself?” Erin asked.
“Cask of what now?”
“Never mind,” Erin said. “Guess we’ll find out here soon enough either way.”
Another hour passed, though, without the hatch making an appearance in their pit. Even the moon seemed to lose interest, drifting back behind dark clouds. The wind picked up, too. Swishing leaves around. Pushing Izzy’s sweaty shirt against her back and adhering it there.
That second wave of energy fled over the next hour. Exhaustion overtaking excitement. Izzy’s eyelids grew heavier and heavier.
When she felt a few rain droplets sprinkle against the backs of her arms, she didn’t say anything. Knew Erin would be mad if she suggested giving up until morning.
They were so close now. They had to be.
But the minutes crept by. Five, then ten, then twenty. The shovel stabbed at the ground and flung the dirt away. And Izzy began to worry that maybe this was the one bunker model that didn’t have a hatch. They could be wasting their time digging at all.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. And the periodic drizzle picked up into spitting rain. It was starting now. For real.
Izzy stood. She didn’t want to say anything, but she had to. It was too much. They could go inside and sleep and finish their search in the morning.
“Erin.”
No answer. The shovel kept working. Grinding. Grating. Flinging. And the rain kept picking up. Little droplets exploding wherever they hit.
“Erin, come on. It’s raining. We’ll get it tomorrow.”
Still no answer.
Izzy closed her eyes. Tried to think of how she could appeal to this maniac down in the pit. Talk her down. Get her out of the rain to sleep for a few hours.
“Erin, only two of the three bunker models even had a hatch. What if—”
“Don’t say it,” Erin interrupted.
“But for all we know, we’re digging for nothing!”
“Shut up. We didn’t do all this work for no reason. There’s a hatch.”
A few seconds passed, and the rain seeped through Izzy’s clothes. Her teeth started to chatter.
“But what if there isn’t?”
Erin ignored her.
The shovel kept working. Stabbing. Scraping.
And then finally, Erin stopped. A flicker of lightning flared, and Izzy saw her staring out from the bottom of the pit. Could see the frustrated set of her jaw. The way her lips disappeared from pressing together so hard.
“Oh goddamn it,” Erin said through gritted teeth. “Fine. You win.”
She lifted the shovel and speared it into the ground. An angry motion like a toddler slamming a sippy cup in the midst of a tantrum.
A loud ping rang out. A shrill note piercing the relative quiet of the whispering rain.
The shovel had struck metal.
Erin
Rich Creek, Virginia
9 years, 37 days after
The rain poured and poured. A steady patter of droplets pounded Erin’s shoulders, tapped at the top her head.
She cleared the mud from the top of the hatch the best she could with the shovel, and then she got down on her hands and knees to scrape it away with her fingers. Izzy joined in right away, jumping down from the edge of the pit, plopping down next to her.
Sloppy gloop pooled in Erin’s hands. Runny. Cool to the touch. She hurled it away, watching the sludge elongate as it flung out over the yard where the dark swallowed it.
It wasn’t long, however, until she could no longer see it at all. Just flinging muck into the void.
Somehow the blackness of the night had intensified. The closest lantern hissed and went out. Maybe the wet had gotten to it somehow.