She turned towards the kitchen and started surveying their stock. What had happened had shortened their supplies from three years to less than three months. Maybe not even that. Shit was right.
“What do we do, Dean?” she asked, but he didn’t answer. Gina pulled a chair up next to him and grabbed his face in her hands. He looked absently at her face. “Dean. This is serious.”
He didn’t answer. Without even thinking, she reached a hand back and brought it across his face, hard. She felt her hand sting at the impact and suddenly Dean was up, anger coloring his face. The chair was thrown back with ease. He grabbed her by her wrist and pulled her up, dropping her on the table. His golden eyes shone with fury.
“This is all your fault!” he yelled. Gina’s mouth gaped open. What? How could he say that? “I should never have moved all of that stuff into the room to please you!”
“Don’t try to put that on me!” she shot back. She knew he was angry, lashing out. But hearing him say it still hurt. “I had nothing to do with that!”
Dean sat back in the chair heavily, resigned to his fate.
“What are we going to do?” she asked. The anger drained from his face as he thought. Gina hoped that it would fade away completely soon so he could focus on what they were going to do to survive.
“Sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Gina told him. She had to snap him out of this funk. “Dean. What are we going to do?”
“I… don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? You never had a backup plan in place?”
“No. Not with a bunker failure this catastrophic.”
“We have to figure this out, Dean. Things are bad.”
Gina looked up at the ceiling: smoke was floating at the top of the room. Soon, the air would be too toxic and smoky to breathe safely.
“Okay, Dean. First thing’s first: what do we do about the smoke?”
“The air system should take care of it.”
“Should,” Gina repeated. “What’s that mean?”
“There’s an air filter that cycles out all of the toxins: smoke, mold spores, carbon dioxide.”
“Let’s go take a look at it and make sure it’s working,” Gina said. She didn’t know much about that, but she had to get Dean back on track. She had to get him working; had to get him focused on the thing he did best: surviving.
Together, the two of them went into the generator room. Dean stepped around the still hot masses of melting supplies and metal. The filter system was built into the far wall. He reached out hesitantly, making sure that it wasn’t too hot to touch, and opened it up. He poked around for a few moments, then replaced the cover without a word.
“What, Dean?”
“The filter itself is in good enough shape. A bit burnt and melted, but it’ll do fine,” he said, but he didn’t seem happy about it.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The filter itself is fine. But the replacement air filters burnt up in the fire.”
“And what’s that mean?”
“It means we have to leave, and soon. The filter can handle most of the smoke, but after that, we won’t have any clean air afterwards.”
Gina leaned against a wall and thought. “Could we just open the door? Get some fresh air in here?”
Dean shrugged. “Yeah, if it’s safe out there. But that defeats the whole idea of a sealed bunker.”
“Would you rather be dead in here, or alive out there?”
Dean didn’t answer.
“Okay, let’s check the food situation,” Gina offered. Dean went into the kitchen and started taking supply counts. There truly wasn’t much left – a lot of meal packs that Gina didn’t relish eating. But they would have no choice soon. Their hand had been forced.
“We have enough for two weeks between the two of us,” Dean said. He didn’t say it with any kind of anger, or conviction; just simple truth. “Then we’ll starve.”
“That’s not going to happen, Dean,” she told him. “I’m sorry that this happened to you. I’m sorry that I was forced onto you like this. But we have got to figure out what our next move is. I don’t intend to die in here and I don’t intend to die out there,” she continued, motioning towards the front door. “But I’ll need your help.”
“I don’t know,” Dean said, and she knew he meant it. He hesitated. “I don’t know much else besides this.”
“I won’t survive out there, Dean. Not alone. And you won’t survive in here for much longer. We need each other, whether you like it or not.”
He nodded slowly. “It makes sense.”
“Great. Then let’s get some rest and we’ll figure out our plan when we wake up in the morning.”
*
Dean was back in his chair, unable to sleep. Before he’d retired to his room, he’d peeked in on Gina. Somehow, despite the fire and everything going to hell, she was able to get back to sleep almost immediately. He didn’t know how she did it. He wished he could.
Things were bad. There weren’t a lot of options left.
It was true that they could open a door, if the outside air was clean. But what they couldn’t get more of was clean water. When the fire had raged out of control, it had ruined the water purifiers, too. And he knew this area: there wasn’t a clean stream within two miles. Two miles was just too far away to transport water back and forth, especially the amount they would need to keep the bunker operational. And definitely not with her injured leg.
After Gina had gone to sleep, Dean had checked the water supply. It would be empty within three days, no matter how much they rationed it. They had three days and then they would have to leave. There was no other choice.
He slammed his hand on the table, not caring if he woke Gina. He felt irrational anger towards her: he had gone out of his way to conform to her needs, to make her comfortable here. What he had done - putting all of his vital supplies in one area - was a rookie mistake. His grandfather would have never forgiven him. That thought stung.
He never should have tried to help her. Maybe he should have left her in her car. Or he should have forced her out when she could walk. He never should have done what he did.
And the worst part of it all? She had been right. He knew what had started the fire: it was that damn rolling generator he had pushed to the back. He had pushed it too close to some of the pipes and hot water heater. The pilot light had lit the gasoline in the generator on fire. It had exploded like a bomb.
It was his fault, of course, but he couldn’t help but feel like it was also Gina’s, in a way. Because of her, he’d put things in that room. Because of where she had placed the generator in the first place, he had felt the need to move it more to his liking. And he had been wrong. Still, he blamed her. He blamed himself. He slammed his hand on the table again, sleep eluding him.
*
“So. What supplies do we have left?”
Dean sat in the chair, silent. He was still feeling anger towards Gina. He knew it wasn’t fair, but he couldn’t help it. His conversation skills were lacking, he knew, and so was his ability to deal with everyone else. He was having trouble accepting the blame lay with him, even though he knew it was true.
“Dean. What’s your problem?”
He didn’t answer at first. He didn’t know how he could tell her that it was her fault, when it so clearly wasn’t. Maybe the problem was that he couldn’t admit he was wrong.
“You still blame me for this,” Gina said. She sat her clipboard down on the table. Dean looked up in surprise. How had she known? “You’re not real good at hiding your feelings, either.”
“I let you cloud my judgment.”
Gina’s laugh was harsh and bitter. “Think what you want, Dean. I don’t care, anymore. I’m interested in surviving, and if you’re not going to help, then get out of the way. Blame me, don’t blame me. It’s all the same to me.”
Some of the anger Dean was feeling faded. She was right. He starte
d looking everything over. They had moved all of the surviving food, water, and supplies into the bedroom. It was a pretty meager assortment.
Gina paced around the room, picking up the clipboard. She was all business now. Did it really not bother her, what he’d said?
“Okay,” Dean started. Where to begin? “Thirty four meal packs. A dozen boxes of ration bars. About fifteen cans of assorted fruits.”
“About?” Gina asked. “How many, exactly?”
Dean counted them out. “Thirteen. Four peaches, eight cans of fruit cocktail, and a can of pineapple chunks.”
“Any other food?”
“Four cans of your ravioli survived, and all of Petey’s food,” he told her, looking at the stack of the dog’s food in the corner. He had never seen the point of moving it into the storage room, since Petey had eaten in his bedroom. He was thankful for that.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Okay, what about clothing? Blankets, all of that good stuff?”
Dean got up out of the chair and went to what they had piled onto the bed. He sorted through it. “Most of your clothes survived, as did a week’s worth of mine. We have a couple of blankets, but only one heavy one, and the rest burned up in the storage room. Your pillows.”
“Plus your pillow and a sheet.”
“Plus a pillow and a sheet,” he agreed. Then he went back to the table and started digging through what was there. “We also have half of one of your med kits. A couple of wrenches. That’s about it.”
He watched as Gina blanched. They had lost so much in the fire, it hurt to think about. He couldn’t believe it. Gina had the forethought to grab so many necessary supplies that could save lives – and had saved hers – and now they were all gone.
“We’ll get through this,” she said. He knew she was saying it to reassure herself. Then she turned towards him and asked, “Dean, what’s really going on out there? Were they bombs? Nukes? What’s going on? I saw some bad things out there before you saved my life.”
“I don’t know the whole deal,” Dean admitted. “But the government dropped bombs on some of their major city centers. They feared some kind of attack and moved to preemptively stop it. Only their intelligence was wrong. There was no attack – the attack was caused by their own bombs.”
“That’s horrible.”
“A lot of the major cities are gone. New York, Boston, L.A. Atlanta is half leveled. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. I heard all of this information from the radio before it cut out. What did you see out there?”
“I’m from a town called Haysberry,” Gina told him. Dean nodded. He’d never been there before, but he knew where it was. “I went back there to rescue Petey. The town was burning up. People were going crazy. Looting the place. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen before.”
“That’s one of the things you can always expect,” Dean said simply. His grandfather had taught him a lot. One of the things he’d been sure to teach was that when the world went to hell, people would quickly follow it.
“What else can we expect?” Gina asked. Her voice was shaking ever so slightly. She was scared.
“Well, the major city centers – the ones that have survived so far, anyway, will go next. The government is trying to hold them and keep them safe, but it’ll all fail before long. That’s where we need to avoid, no matter what the cost.”
“And then what?”
“Well, the government will collapse entirely. The survivors in the cities will disperse into the countryside. That’s when things get really dangerous, especially now. The laws will be meaningless. We’ll be out on the road, alone. It’s going to be bad.”
Gina sat down in the chair. “Is there any hope for us?”
Dean considered. His grandfather was a hard man, and a realist. In his estimation, the answer was no. There was no way civilization could rebuild after it collapsed. “Yeah, there is. Bastions of humanity will form again and we’ll begin to rebuild.”
“Are things really that bad out there? Truthfully?”
Dean nodded. He had intended to live out the next three to four years in the shelter alone. The surface wouldn’t be safe until then. Now, he had no choice. No, they had no choice.
“Dean, how do you know all of this?”
“My grandfather taught me. He was a survivalist to the core. He taught me everything I know.”
“And was he always right?”
Dean nodded sadly. “He was.”
*
They stashed everything they were going to take into two duffel bags. Dean took the heaviest one and dropped it at the doorway. Gina’s was a little bit lighter, stuffed full of clothes, the thick blanket, and some of their food. It was a lot to carry, but Gina knew it still wasn’t enough.
They had decided to stay in the bunker for one more night. Everything smelled of smoke and they were running low on water, so there were no showers for them. Gina was bummed, but there was nothing she could do. She had been looking forward to baths and showers, and now, she might not get one for who knows how long.
On the other side, things with Dean weren’t so bad. What he had said to her still hurt. She knew it wasn’t fair for him to blame her, and she thought he knew that, too. She understood why he did it, though. She had come into his life, turned it upside down, and look where it had gotten him. He was angry. She hoped that, in time, his anger would fade away and he would be able to forgive himself. And by extension, forgive her.
So, that still stung. At least he had opened up to her ever so slightly; it was a welcome change. He still didn’t talk much, but at least now he talked at all, and had explained a little bit about his grandfather and his upbringing. He’d told her the situation outside the day before, and she was thankful to know a little bit about what was going on. Thankful to know a little bit about what they were getting themselves into.
They had just a small amount of water left, so Gina had taken Dean into the bathroom and forced him to shave and cut his hair. He hadn’t wanted to at first, but Gina had been persuasive. Plus, it was still singed and looked ridiculous.
“Look, Dean. It’s going to be tough out there and we’re going to run into other people,” she’d told him. “I can’t have you scaring off anyone that could potentially help us.”
“But maybe I’ll scare off some people that are looking to harm us,” he had shot back. Gina had shot him a look, and Dean had nodded in agreement. “Maybe you’re right.”
She was, of course. Dean looking like a wild man would definitely have its perks, but she couldn’t risk him scaring other people away. It wasn’t just going to be them out there. And if anyone did end up posing a threat, hopefully Dean and Petey could fight them off.
She hoped it would never come to that, but she wasn’t stupid. Ideally she would use her people skills, and skills as a doctor, to help others and keep them safe. Maybe it was a pipe dream, but it was what she had to offer, and maybe it would be enough.
Now, they stood at the door, ready to step outside and leave the safety of the bunker forever. Gina stood and looked over at Dean: he was truly huge, and with a new haircut and a clean face, he actually looked good. He looked like a normal person. Gina knew his conversation skills were lacking, but she was going to make up for that.
MARS (BBW Bear Shifter MC Romance) (MC Bear Mates Book 1) Page 43