The Barriers

by Katie French

  I climb down until the moonlight above me is just a tiny circle above. Jesus, how far does this thing go? Sweat runs off me like rivers. My palms are sweaty against the coarse rope. My legs ache from trying to brace myself. My arms tremble. It’s dark as a midnight shit in here. I lick sweat off my lip and gently let up on the rope to let my body slip down another couple of feet.

  But then, my hands slip. That’s all it takes, one slip of my sweaty palms, and I’m falling. I grab for the rope, for the sides of the pipe. My hands slip off the metal, doing nothing to stop my fall. My body drops at a sickening pace.

  Trying not to holler, I free fall in total darkness, hands out, feet dragging against the pipe’s sides, but nothing stops me.

  The bomb on my back. I’ll be blown into a million wet chunks when I smash into the bottom. Christman Jesus. My heart might explode before the bomb does.

  Suddenly, I feel my body shift, and my fall becomes less free-fall drop and more stomach skid. The pipe angle flattens gradually until my body skids to a stop.

  I lay there on my stomach, in the dark, panting.

  “Shit on a shingle,” I mutter under my breath.

  When my heart’s done breakin’ out of my chest, I inch forward. The pipe’s too narrow to get up on my hands and knees or to turn around, so a backward army crawl has to suffice. A dozen feet or so later, my toes dip into empty space where the pipe should be. Scooching back a little more, I reach around with my hands and feel the square of empty space. The pipe must angle down here as well as ahead. Judging from the hot air blastin’ from it, the pipe down feeds into the building’s heatin’ and coolin’. Droppin’ my legs into the square hole up to my waist and holdin’ on like hell with my hands, I’m able to flip myself forward and continue my crawl face-first.

  It takes me a hell of a long time to get to the grate that leads into the compound. The pipe narrows even further, so my crawlin’ gets reduced to a snail’s pace. I’m in the pipe so long my muscles cramp and it’s hard to take a deep breath. The dark swims in front of me until I start seein’ things that aren’t there. But when I feel fresh air, I know I’m almost to the end. I nearly whoop with joy.

  A dim light grows until I can see my hands again. Inchin’ forward, I try to stay quiet. The people on the other side of this grate would probably be happy to remove my head from my body if they catch me.

  The grate that separates me from the inside of the compound is exactly how the men described it—a square metal mesh bolted around the edges. I spend another five sweaty minutes reachin’ behind me and diggin’ around in the pack before I find what I’m lookin’ for—the snips. They do the job, cuttin’ around the grate’s edge. I remove the circle of wire, scoot forward, and peer out.

  Before me is a long, empty hallway, with dim yellow lights along the floor. The walls are concrete and sparse with no decorations except a few stripes of faded yellow paint along the ceiling and floor. It’s dead silent, and it should be. The men assured me I’m droppin’ myself into an area that’s barely traveled. According to their surveillance, no one would come down here unless there’s something wrong with the ventilation. These people are doctors. They don’t patrol hallways or set up watch. They think they’re impenetrable. And that’s a good thing for me.

  It also makes me wonder how the hell Mike and his men know so much about this compound if they’ve never been in it. Maybe it’s all a bunch of horseshit, but it’s too late to worry about that now.

  I scoot out, tucking and rolling out of the shaft. Dropping to my feet in a crouch, I freeze. When I’m sure it’s quiet, I adjust my pack and head left like they told me.

  The main goal, they said, was to bring down the power. Without power to run lights, heat, ventilation, and water, they’ll be forced to leave. Like pouring water down an anthill, they’ll tumble out, right into Mike’s awaiting arms. For the first time, I wonder if what I’m doin’ is right. Mike intends to kill all these people, just murder ’em in their nighties. I don’t know them from John Doe. They could be the best damn people in the world. They could save babies, or cure rancher’s flu, and I’d be the one sendin’ ’em to their deaths.

  Right this way, ladies and gentlemen. Walk lively now. The murder must go on.

  But it’s them or Cole. Them or us.

  The dim hallway forks and I head left again. I find the room with the door labeled “Maintenance” in small, black letters. There’s no watch, no cameras. These people are lazy and careless. Someone, my pa I think, always said being lazy and careless is the same as being dead. Maybe they deserve what’s comin’.

  I quietly pull down on the door handle in front of me, but it’s locked. It would be better if I could drop the bag inside, but here against the door is about as good. They told me this bomb will be powerful enough to take out a door and half this section, too. A comforting thought while I’m sliding the pack off my back and unzippin’ it.

  Very carefully, I lift out the pipe bomb and hold it in my hands. It’s amazing that somethin’ as small as a loaf of bread could destroy half this compound. And it’s pretty damn terrifyin’ to hold it in your hands. I set the metal cylinder, with wires and the timer clinging to it, carefully beside the power room door. The timer is a digital clock that someone has attached and wired inside. I’m supposed to set it for as little time as possible and then climb my way out the pipe, but how the hell am I gonna reach the rope? It isn’t the first time it crosses my mind that they planned for me to get in, not out.

  No matter. I’ll set the timer for longer than I’d planned and make my way to the main entrance. I’ve memorized the blueprints. Even if I can’t get out, I’ll be far enough away that this bomb won’t do me no harm. The blast will draw them to the back, and I’ll slip out the front.

  My finger hovers over the buttons that will set the timer. Once it’s set, I’ve been told, there’s no undoing it. I punch the minute buttons until twenty minutes glows red.

  I press start.

  When the timer begins to tick down, I put the backpack over it in case someone walks by. Then I hightail it back down the hallway.

  Slipping through the dark is pretty unnervin’. Every hallway is concrete, dimly lit, and unmarked, so I quickly get turned around with no idea of where I’m goin’. So much for memorized blueprints. I take a right down one hallway and then a left, skulkin’ past closed doors that all look the same.

  Voices, faint and male. I press my body flat against the wall, barely breathin’. About ten feet away, the hallway opens up to a large corridor. Two distinct tones answer each other in quiet conversation. Maybe there is a night’s watch. Maybe it’s two doctors who couldn’t sleep. I can’t hear what they’re sayin’, only that by the sound of their tones, they’re not alarmed. They don’t know I’m about to blow their balls off.

  Gripping the cool concrete, I try to think. I could head back, but if I’m hearin’ people, that probably means I’ve wandered closer to an exit. And how much time have I spent skiddin’ down hallways? Ten minutes? That gives me about ten more before the big boom. I don’t have time to wait for these bozos to leave.

  Slidin’ along the wall, I scoot to the edge of the hallway and peek out. The corridor does open up considerably with a ceiling that soars about thirty or forty feet. It’s a cavernous, echoing space with hallways runnin’ in all directions from the hub-like spokes on a wheel. The men whose voices I heard lean against a canvas-covered vehicle, shootin’ the shit. One is tall and muscled with a buzzed haircut, very military in his look and stance. The other is older, paunchy with a scraggly beard and wild bedhead hair. I wonder if they got weapons. I wonder if I can take ’em both with just my bare hands.

  But I ain’t got time for that.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  I whip toward the voice, my throat constrictin’. Four feet away, a woman—no, a bender—stares at me. Her hair is close-cropped on one side and long on the other. Her clothes are baggy, worn, and military, covering a slender, muscular frame. In her han
d a ceramic mug spews coils of steam. It must be coffee based on the smell. In a second, I take this in, just as she is takin’ me in. I watch her face morph from surprise, to confusion, to alarm.

  “I’m… maintenance,” I stammer.

  “What?” she asks, her brow furrowed. Not taking her eyes off me, she tilts her head back and calls over her shoulder, “Dennis!”

  I turn and bolt.

  I sprint down the hallway, boots slappin’ on the concrete. Above my labored breathin’ and the sound of my footsteps, I can hear her in pursuit. She’s fast. Taking random turns, I slip through the maze of hallways, tryin’ to lose her, but I’m sure she knows this place better than I do. Soon, she’ll have me cornered.

  Shit.

  I sprint down two more corridors and only skid to a halt when I spy somethin’ small and black next to a doorway labeled, “Maintenance.”

  Christman Jesus. I’ve run right back to the bomb.

  I kneel down and pull the bag off. The numbers on the timer read 2:32. Two minutes and thirty-two seconds until I’m a wet mess dribblin’ down these walls.

  “Hands up where I can see ’em!”

  I whip around.

  The bender is there, a foldout knife in her hand. The blade is only three inches, but sharp. It’ll put a hurtin’ on me if she knows how to use it, and her face tells me she might.

  “Listen,” I say, still pantin’. “We gotta get outta here. This bomb is gonna blow.” I nod to the floor.

  “What’re you talking about?” With the knife still out, her eyes flick down to the pipe bomb at my feet.

  My arm snaps out, slammin’ into hers and knocking her knife away. She cries out, more in anger than in pain, and dives for the knife. In that second, I bolt toward the only exit I know. Takin’ two rights, I find the open grate. Pullin’ myself up, I wonder how many seconds are on that bomb’s timer. Enough for me to get away? Once I’m in the pipe, I army crawl like mad, knees and elbows bangin’ against the pipe, makin’ it rattle and shake. Sweatin’ and swearin’, I find the incline and start scramblin’ my way up, but my hands are slick. How many minutes? Will this tunnel collapse and crush me inside? Goddamn it! This whole mission was a shitty idea.

  A giant explosion shakes my world apart.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Auntie Bell

  Something shakes my bed so hard I startle away, clutching one arthritic hand to my chest and sucking air like a fish pulled ashore.

  “Butter my biscuits,” I mutter, staring at the underside of the bunk above me. “What in the holy hell was that?”

  I sit up, pain flaring in my bones all the way to my toes. That tumble in the Jeep nearly did me in. My old body ain’t what it used to be, and that’s saying something, because it used to be glorious. Now I’m a wrinkled bag of meat with brittle sticks holding me up. Slowly, I swing my legs out from under the coarse blanket and onto the cold cement floor. The rest of the bunkhouse is empty. This facility was meant to house more than a dozen pencil-pushing doctors and their sick experiments. Now it holds one cranky grandma and her night farts.

  Another blast rolls through the room, shaking the floor and the walls. The bunks rattle. On the far end, something falls and shatters on the floor. My heart, which was already pounding, now picks up until I worry my ticker might poop out and leave me sprawled on the floor in a piss puddle. And what would it matter? Riley’s gone, off saving someone or other. I lost Janine. Losing Ethan was the final blow. Without that boy and my hard-as-nails girl… There ain’t no more traveling down that lonesome road.

  Still, I get up, my back popping with a series of cracks like pine knots in a fire. I pull the blanket over my flimsy gown like a shawl and shuffle toward the door.

  An alarm begins sounding—an awful blat, blat, blat that makes me want to take a hammer to it, but it’s way up in the corner. Along with the alarm, a flashing red light turns the room into the world’s most boring disco. Bran once took me to what remained of a disco while we were on the border waiting to get married. Seeing him is salt in an old wound like I wouldn’t have believed possible, even if he does look like a sack of dried shit. I chuckle. I look like I’ve been run over by a composter, so I ain’t one to judge. Still, when he saw me, there was that same look in his eyes, like something was crawling around in his drawers. Like he wanted to pull me in and press his mouth to my neck, wrinkled as it is.

  I finally make it to the door—a giant concrete thing with no window so I can only guess what might be going on beyond. With the alarm blasting in my ear, I can’t hear the explosions, but I can feel them rumble through the building. We’re underground. If someone set off a bomb, it won’t take much to bring the whole piecrust down on our heads.

  And then, even after all these years, a twinge of fear starts in my gut. I don’t want to die in my pajamas. I don’t want to shit my granny panties and be found some months later by the dogs that scavenge this hellhole. I make a vow then and there to survive. For Riley. For my own damn self.

  However, when I pull open the door, the smoke billows in, acrid and foul. I push the door shut, coughing. Looking around the room tinted red by the alarm lights, I find the only other door all the way across the room.

  “Well, poop,” I murmur.

  I hike my shawl over my shoulders and start back the other way.

  When I’m three steps from the concrete door and ready to give it another try, the door pushes open. A man on the other side stumbles in, panting and staring. His shirt is covered in sweat, ash, and blood from a cut on his right shoulder. This pudgy middle-aged fellow, balding and wearing smeary glasses, gapes at me as he tries to catch his breath.

  “Who are you?” he asks.

  “Who in this fresh hell are you?” I say, drawing my blanket tighter around me. “And why are you staring at a lady in her unmentionables?”

  He takes his glasses off and wipes them on his filthy shirt. “It’s bad out there. Terrible. We’re all going down. This is it.”

  Setting his glasses back on his face, he looks at me again. “We need to get out of here. They’ve blown a main support beam. The whole thing is probably going to come down.”

  I squint at him with my good eye and say, “Then why are we jawing? Let’s roll.”

  A smile breaks across his face for the first time. He reaches for my hand. I consider his offer for a moment and shake my head. “Lead the way,” I say, holding my shawl.

  There’s as much smoke on this side of the door as the other. I pull the shawl over my mouth and try to duck low while still keeping up. The narrow, concrete hallways pulse with red alarm lights. Thick smoke swirls in the beams, making this all seem hellish, the stuff of nightmares. I hope Pudgy here knows how to get us out.

  He takes a left and then a right, skidding to a stop when he finds a corridor blocked by huge chunks of concrete. It looks like the ceiling has caved in. Above us, cracks splinter through the remaining concrete. Any moment, huge boulders could rain down on us. Pudgy looks up, too, nervously rubbing his hands together. “That was the main exit,” he shouts. “We have to go back!”

  “Back?” I squawk. “Thought you said you knew where you were going!”

  He shakes his head, turning around and heading back down the hallway. “This way.”

  I roll my eyes and follow, cursing under my breath.

  A few more turns and our corridor opens up into the large, domed room I remember from when we first got here. The ceiling rises up thirty feet, rounding into a concrete dome. The dome is cracked like an egg, and half of it has tumbled in smoldering piles on the far side. One of their vehicles is buried in chunks of concrete and brown dirt with only the nose sticking out. Half of the dome has collapsed, letting in ash-choked moonlight and a little bit of fresh air. It’s a way out, but I’d never be able to climb it. Even as we stand gaping, more heavy concrete separates from the dome and crashes to the floor, smashing into bits and knocking equipment to the ground.

  “It’s all coming down,” Pudgy says,
shocked.

  Behind us, several pops sound before another loud crash shakes the floor. Hot air rushes out of the tunnel behind us, blasting our backs with grit and small bits of concrete.

  “Christ on a donkey,” I say, covering my face with my shawl. “If we’re getting out, now would be the time!”

  Pudgy flicks a glance at me like he’s forgotten I exist. His glasses are covered with so much filth, I’m not sure he can see. The grime makes his hair and face the same sandy color, darkening the wrinkles around his eyes and the lines in his forehead. Still, he takes my hand without asking and pulls me down the only corridor that isn’t covered in hunks of concrete. “We’ll be safe down he—”

  His words are drowned out by a terrible rumble. The walls, the floor, everything shakes. I lose my grip on Pudgy’s hand. Pebbles rain on my head. Above, huge cracks chase down the concrete and across the walls, splitting the stone in a spider’s web of fissures. Stones pelt my head and shoulders. They smash on the floor around us. One strikes Pudgy in the head, driving him to his knees. As I reach for him, something smashes into my back. I fall as stones rain on my body.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Ethan

  Up on the moonlit hill, with Hank yanking me around and Betsy whining somewhere in the distance, it’s all I can take. I kick my foot back, looking for Hank’s shins. He dodges me and hooks his boney fingers tighter into my shirt. “Let me go, you bastard!” I scream.

  Hank knees me in the kidney and shoves me on the ground. I land face down, my hands digging into the dirt. I start to get up, but he puts his foot on my back and presses me down.

  “Keep struggling, you little shit,” Hank’s voice says from behind me.

  I could kill him. I could kill this kid.

  After we dropped Clay off, I knew something wasn’t right. I expected them to take me back to Mike’s compound to wait for Clay to return. Instead, Hank told the driver to circle around and park at the base of the hill. When I asked Betsy what the hell we were doing, she wouldn’t look at me. She just stared at her white, dimpled knees and shrugged. She was acting like a kid who stole a pie off the window ledge, so I knew she was in with Hank. With the truck parked and the engine idling like a grumpy bear, I jumped off the truck bed and took off in the direction I thought Clay might be.