Protocol One

by Jacqueline Druga

  Tony opened the blast door and I welcomed the bright lights and the sight of Duke.

  “How was it?” Duke asked.

  “Dark,” I replied with a nervous chuckle.

  “What do we want to do?” Duke looked at Tony. “We nixing the fires?”

  With a stammering, “Uh’, Tony glanced back out into the dark. “Leave it up to the people. If they want to go out, they can stay close to the bunker if we light a couple fires. Like Peter said, this is the last normal temperature we’ll have for a while. But, no kids. I don’t want to take a chance they run off into the dark. How fucking scary would that be?”

  “Personally,” Duke said. “I think going out there is nuts. I’ll wait it out.”

  “What about you?” Tony asked me. “Did you get enough?”

  “Oh, no, I’m going out with a campfire. Maybe for a few minutes. I mean this was Peter’s idea.”

  “Really?” Tony said snidely.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Before he could answer, his name was called over the radio and Tony lifted it. “Yeah, Tom. I’m here. We just came back in. I’ll be up if you want to step up.”

  “No, that’s not it,” Tom said. “You may want to get up here. We made contact.”

  <><><><>

  Tony and I ran top speed down the stairs and to the switch room. There was a feeling of hope that consumed me. Yes, it had only been two weeks since impact, but to suspect life extended farther than our bunker was one thing. To know it was another.

  We arrived and Tom looked as if he felt agitated.

  “What’s wrong?” Tony asked.

  “They aren’t saying much,” Tom replied.

  “Bad signal?”

  “It’s not great, but it’s there. They just aren’t saying much. Like they’re playing games.”

  “Can it be local? Maybe the fire hall?” Tony suggested.

  “I doubt it. They’re gonna need some power behind the antenna. Knowing the limitations with the cotton candy cloud, I’m gonna say this is not local. I mean it could be.”

  “But you think it’s one of the three. Which one? Omega Man, Damnation Alley, or Threads?”

  I interrupted. “Wait. You just named movies.”

  “Yes,” Tony replied. “The secret bunkers were named after disaster and apocalypse movies.”

  “That is so ridiculous. You probably just reached locals who are saying, Yeah, we’re Omega Man.”

  Tom shook his head. “No. I did not call out to them. I just called out. They replied Damnation Alley.”

  Tony’s eyes widened. “Oh my God.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “That’s the main one. That’s the one in Texas where Gil went.”

  Another instant shot of adrenaline filled my body and I could feel the blood pump fast.

  “What did you ask them?” Tony questioned Tom.

  “I asked them to verify their location and how many survivors. They said it was classified.”

  Tony immediately grabbed the radio. “I’ll try.” He pressed down to speak. “Damnation Alley Damnation Alley, do you read?”

  “Roger that. Loud and clear.”

  We may have been loud and clear to them, but there was a lot of static coming from their end. We still could understand them.

  “We are a survival Station in North East Pennsylvania called Protocol One.” Tony said.

  “Never heard of it.”

  “We have survivors.”

  “Congratulations on survival. Please know there is nothing this station can do for you at this time.”

  Tony pulled his hand away. “What an asshole.”

  “Told you,” Tom said.

  Tony tried again. “Damnation Alley, we are a privately funded shelter with a VIP and scientific experts.”

  “We have VIPS and scientific experts too.”

  Tony groaned and looked at me. “What is this? My bunker is better than yours? What the fuck. Sorry.” He depressed the button again. “Damnation Alley I am not playing games with you. My name is Anthony Garrison of Global Security and with me is Anna Jenner. Former wife of Senator Gil Jenner. We know your location and I can spew forth the list of VIPs that you have there, but I won’t. Since you won’t give me any information, can you at least get a message to Senator Gil Jenner?”

  Nothing.

  “Damnation Alley, come in.”

  Finally, they returned, and they had lost their arrogant tone. “Protocol One, Senator Jenner never arrived at the facility.”

  The second I heard that, I wheezed out all the air from my body and stepped back. Tony tried not to show emotion but I saw it. He froze for a second, hand hovering over the microphone while his jaws clenched.

  “Damnation Alley, are you sure? Maybe he’s there.”

  “Negative. We lost contact with the Senator in route. I was personally part of the search party that went out after impact.”

  I walked from the switch room, I couldn’t listen anymore.

  Tony asked more questions and the more he asked, the less I wanted to hear. I picked up enough of the conversation to know there was no mistake.

  I just started walking. The shock of it all took me over and I really didn’t know where I was headed. I made it to the stairwell that went topside and midway up, I just stopped and sat down.

  I didn’t know what to do. The shock was more than I expected. My thoughts were fuzzy and I couldn’t move. I literally couldn’t move.

  Tony came blasting through the fail safe door, as if in a panic looking for me. He stopped suddenly and was breathing heavily. “There you are.”

  I just stared at my hands.

  “I’m sorry. I really am.”

  I felt my lips tremble and I rubbed my hands together.

  “Are you okay?”

  I closed my eyes, trying to absorb it. “Um, yeah. I’ll be okay.”

  But that wasn’t the truth. Truth was, I didn’t know.

  Gil.

  He planned everything. He had prepared for anything and everything about survival except for the possibility that he wouldn’t survive.

  I didn’t know how much more heartbreak I could take.

  In my soul and in my mind, I truly believed and envisioned Gil doing well, locked down in a high end shelter. But that wasn’t the case.

  Gil didn’t make it.

  The words didn’t make sense.

  The whole situation did not make sense.

  Not long before I had been waiting for something to jump out of the darkness, out of nowhere, and it now it had.

  31 – Missing Piece

  August 15

  Poor Anna.

  Did I want people to think that again? They would. Less, if they didn’t see how it affected me.

  I was determined not to be Poor Anna again.

  Poor Anna lost her son. Poor Anna lost the father of her child and the man who built all this for her.

  Poor Anna has everything she needs to survive except a reason to live.

  That was not how I wanted to be perceived. I asked Tony and Tom not to tell anyone. The others didn’t need to know.

  After the news, I took a few minutes on the stairs then went up to watch as almost everyone went out to enjoy the air and the fires.

  Funny how we dreaded the fires that burned out our world, yet we celebrated their light that night.

  I stood at the blast door watching them. Tony stood with me. He asked me a few more times if I was all right. Each time I told him the same thing. I would be fine.

  At one point, Tony said. “Well, I’m not. I’m in shock over this. I didn’t not expect this.”

  My response was only, “Can we not talk about it?”

  So we stood in silence.

  The temperature hadn’t dropped much by the time Duke called it a night for everyone. Nelly didn’t go out. She stayed back with the children.

  When we all retreated, it was good to see that Spencer came out of his room. He didn’t know me well, yet he
asked if everything was okay because I looked like something happened.

  Was I that transparent?

  Maybe it was showing because I was processing it so much. Or at least trying to.

  Skyler had left me a list of items removed from storage to stock the kitchen. I decided to enter them into the tablet, to take my mind off of things. But instead I found myself going through all of Jackson’s saved pictures.

  Life had changed drastically and for the worse in such a short span of time. That happy go lucky woman, holding her teenage son, was gone.

  Would she ever return?

  After finishing the work, I decided to turn in. It wasn’t late and almost everyone was still awake. I was hungry, and decided to go for a snack. A fresh sheet of paper was on the cupboards. Even though Melissa felt we didn’t need to track what we used in the kitchen, Nelly did. So out of courtesy, I marked down that granola bar, then opened the cupboard to retrieve it.

  It struck me as odd because Skyler had written down that he stocked ten boxes of bars when clearly he did not. I wasn’t going to fuss about it. I’d make my adjustments in the morning, yet I noted it on the checklist.

  I read from a history book in my room until I couldn’t keep my eyes open. That was how I wanted it. To fall asleep without taking a chance of tossing and turning with thoughts of Jackson and Gil.

  I woke at the rooster crow of the alarm, and as I did, I felt a tickle to my nose.

  Believing some bug made it into the bunker and was crawling on me, I jumped up to discover the reason. The wayward long dark hair danced across my pillow.

  Joie was sleeping in my bed and her hair was the nose tickle culprit.

  I wasn’t going to wake her, but she rolled over.

  “Hey,” I said. “Did you have a bad dream?”

  “I don’t think so. Why?”

  “You’re sleeping in my bed.”

  “Daddy put me in here. He said you wouldn’t mind. He had an emergency.”

  “Daddy had an emergency?” I sprang up.

  “Are you mad I am in bed? He didn’t want me along.”

  “No, that’s fine. I’m not mad at all. It was nice. When Jack … Jackson was a little boy, he’d always slip in bed with me.” Hearing my own words made me stop. The reality slap hit me. It was a daily occurrence when I woke up. A chest punch of pain that reminded me every day my son was gone. I pulled myself together and slipped from bed. “How long has daddy been gone?”

  “The window picture was dark.”

  That told me he was gone long enough for his daughter to fall back to sleep. I got dressed and asked Joie if she wanted to go to the ladies room with me. She did.

  I figured I would freshen up, then get coffee and find Tony. I didn’t know whether to be concerned or pissed about the fact that he didn’t wake me.

  On our return trip back to my room, I spotted Tony opening my door. I called for him and hurried his way.

  He handed me a cup of coffee and lifted Joie.

  “Oh, wow.” I looked at the cup. “You brought me caffeine. What’s up?”

  He motioned his head to my room and we stepped inside. After setting Joie down, he told her, “Hey sweetie, why don’t you go get some clothes and get out of your pajamas? Daddy needs to speak to Anna.”

  Once Joie made her way through the adjoining door, I asked Tony. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “Honestly, you were sleeping and there was nothing you could do.”

  Tony released a soft growl as he ran his fingers through his hair. “Hating to say so, but I think I was right.”

  “You never hate saying you’re right. What’s going on?”

  “During our little campfire pow-wow, one of our fire hall disappeared into the darkness.”

  My mind immediately went in a different direction. “Oh my God. You were worried about that happening. Tell me it wasn’t a child or one of the women.”

  “No, Anna, they didn’t get lost in the dark, they slipped into the dark. Snatched up a flashlight from the bay, and we don’t know what else. They took off unnoticed.”

  “Who?”

  “Our bad boy Lenny.”

  I suddenly felt tense and angry with myself. My insides twisted and turned. Tony was right, he called it all along. One of them would leave. He said it and I refused to believe it. “Do you think they went to get others?”

  “Yeah, we are the only means they will have to beat this cold front.”

  “Maybe he just wants to get them help,” I suggested.

  “At some point you need to stop looking for the good. This survival shit isn’t the time to search for the good in humanity. Not now.”

  “That’s not fair,” I defended.

  “I’m sorry. But if he was worried about the others at the fire hall, why not ask for our help? He didn’t. He took from us and slipped away. This isn’t good.”

  “So you think they’re coming here.”

  “Without a doubt. It’s not a matter of if, but rather, when. And in my opinion, knowing the impending weather.” Tony exhaled slowly from his mouth. “We’re looking at soon. Real soon.”

  32 – Stalled

  I felt bad for Joie. She didn’t ask to be bounced around like a ping pong ball. Yet it seemed as if life wasn’t much different for her. I had learned that the entire month that Tony pretended to date me in Texas, he had flown back and forth to see her. Joie stayed with a relative while Daddy worked out of town.

  Now ‘Daddy’ seemed to be working again and the child was getting bounced around from person to person in the shelter. From Nelly to Spencer to Melissa.

  Even to me. I didn’t mind. They always said it takes a village to raise a child. We were the new village in a pretty bad world.

  After Tony briefed me on what he knew, he went back out again to look for more information. He called for a switch room meeting at ten. What about Joie?

  I asked Nelly if she minded taking Joie while we had our meeting and she didn’t mind. She told me that Joie and the fire hall boy and girl were working on collages of life before the comet. Plus, she was fast falling in love with Joie.

  I didn’t blame her.

  After I had my coffee, I began to process everything a little better and my mind wandered in my ‘see the good in people’ way.

  At the meeting was Tony, Peter, Tom, Abe and myself.

  Not that we were the ‘big wigs’, but the office was small and Tony had acquired all the information he needed.

  We finished watching some of the interior security footage. In it, Lenny walked round very blasé. Because our bunker was so big, no one saw him walking around with the backpack. The footage didn’t capture him doing everything, which made me suspicious. It did however catch him climbing up the hatch shaft with the black bag and returning without it. He also walked right by the switch office at the same time as Tony and I were there.

  He walked right by us and we never knew.

  “So,” Tony said. “According to Skyler, everything he took was taken from general consumption. He didn’t touch storage. Only unsecured areas. When we checked the hatch this morning, it was locked.”

  I asked. “So he secured the hatch?”

  “Looks that way,” Tony said.

  Peter questioned. “Do we know what all he took?”

  Tony, like some sort of detective, whipped out a little notebook. “Two flashlights from the bay. The remaining boxes of matches that were there. Three cartons of granola and one case of five ounce water packets. He left the boxes. He also took two large beef packs of jerky and a case of twelve vials of morphine.” He closed the notebook and snapped his fingers. “Oh, and the ‘you are here’ map down near the generator areas.

  Tom mumbled. “And we know why he took that.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Obviously, to get back in.” Tom said.

  “What if it was just to find his way around topside in the dark?”

  “Anna, please.” Tony said.

  “Please, what? I
am just throwing out suggestions. Isn’t that why we’re here?”

  Tony exhaled and stared at me for a moment. “Yes. But realistic suggestions. I think one man on foot made it those four miles pretty quickly. He had two spotlights and if he was familiar with the area, he knew the way. My guess is they are coming before the weather gets uninhabitable topside. Pete, when will that be?”

  “Temperatures are falling at a couple degrees per hour. Once it hits zero, they better get a move on. For it to reach zero or a little below, we’re looking at two or three days. After that, they’ll never make it longer than five minutes out there.”

  “Three days.” Tony said. “What I suggest are round the clock guards on the Bay area and the Hatch. Also vital security monitoring, round the clock. Someone to walk the floors as well. It’s a lot, but it’s the only way. I also want to keep an eye on our fire hall people.”

  “What if …” I spoke up. “What if that isn’t the reason he left? What if he isn’t that bad and he just wanted to help those at the fire hall and didn’t think we would, so he took and did it himself?”

  “What?” Tony laughed. “Anna, I told you, you are gonna have to lose this 'people are good' attitude.”

  “And do what? Assume all people are bad?”

  “Right now, yes.” He nodded.

  “Are you bad? Am I? How about Pete? Not everyone went bad because the world went to shit. I refuse to believe humanity slammed into the ground when the comet did.”

  “And right now, thinking that nothing is going to happen, puts you and everyone else in danger. He knew our routines. He learned our weaknesses. He took a map of the complex, for crying out loud, Anna. What else do you need?”

  “Has anyone talked to the others from his group to see what they know? To find out his motivation for this?” I asked.

  Abe answered “Anna, all due respect, they wouldn’t say anything if they knew.”

  “Did we try? No. We don’t even trust them and yet we didn’t give these people a chance. We call them vague names. Fire Hall people, Breast feeding woman, Survivor Two.”

  Tom muttered. “Burn girl.”

  “Birthmark guy,” said Pete.

  “See? The only person whose name we bothered to find out or remember was the man who you singled out, Tony.”