by Aiden Bates
They lay in the grass outside the door of their compound to watch the sky fade. They won’t travel farther than that now, won’t move the cars another inch, there’s no more needed out here except to say goodbye. Kevin is still monitoring the state of the world with his cell phone, making sure the launch hasn’t happened yet, and Greg takes in deep lungfuls of fresh air. Goodbye to a million scents, goodbye to rainy days and sunny days, but not goodbye to leaves, that’s what the grow room is for. Goodbye sky.
No one says anything until the sky goes from milky pink to purple, and the first stars start to twinkle through. Glenn takes the kids inside first, says they should go make their beds that are now unloaded in their rooms. They brought a dozen extra mattresses more than their current number—nothing but twins, even the couples have to cram two together to get what they want—for either new sleepers or in case of wear and tear. The kids think it’s fun to sleep on mattresses on the floor. Greg thinks it’ll get tiresome eventually, but he’s fine with being stretched on the ground right now.
Jeff and Julian retire next, then Sam and Clarkie. Sam stops above Greg and reaches for his hand. Greg touches him in weird greeting or departure, whatever this is—it only means that Sam is thinking of him, though he’s too involved with Clarkie to do more than that. Then it’s just Greg and Kevin left, watching the night sky as it deepens.
Kevin sits up and crosses his legs right beside Greg. The stars are bright out here, not much light pollution this far away from any town. Kevin is futzing with his cell phone, watching or tracking whatever will indicate the time has come, and they both seem to understand that they’ll stay out here until the very last moment they safely can. Greg never used to like how stoic Kevin would be with him—back when he and Glenn were dating, having Kevin around was like having a supervised visit with Greg’s own best friend, it was irritating to have him just hang around so silently, but it’s much appreciated now. Kevin doesn’t speak until something on his phone causes him to freeze, and he puts a hand down to touch Greg’s shoulder.
“It’s time,” Kevin says. Greg makes a noise like a sob that he didn’t know was coming before he heard it himself, and Kevin moves his hand to touch Greg’s face with the back of his knuckles. “Stay with us tonight,” Kevin commands.
“Don’t,” Greg says, sitting up quickly, ready to rip the band-aid off at last and lock himself in the dark. It’s time! So let’s just get on with it. “I don’t need your pity, just give me an assignment to keep me busy tonight, something I can tinker with, I’ll be fine.”
“Greg,” Kevin says, still seated and still talking quietly. “Even if I didn’t care about you—and I do, you know, as much as you care about me for the sake of Glenn, at least—there’s something else to consider. There’s nothing worse for morale tonight than everyone knowing you’re somewhere ‘tinkering’ in the dark, alone, bumming out an already precarious situation.”
Greg scoffs. “Sorry I’m so sorry.”
Kevin sighs and stands up, comes to Greg to put both hands on his shoulders, then pulls him into a hug.
“Fuck you, buddy,” Kevin whispers before letting him go. “No one needs a drama queen right now, nor a pity party. Just come stay with me and Glenn and the boys tonight. It’s going to be your family too eventually, you might as well join it now. Either decide you don’t want to hurt yourself any more than you have to, or stay out here and be done with it, your call.”
Kevin walks into the bunker after that, leaving the door open, though obviously he can’t do that for long. Greg scoffs, takes one last deep breath of air so he can sigh petulantly, then follows Kevin inside mumbling that he doesn’t get to order him around just because he’s him fucked once. Kevin snorts from where he stands waiting inside the door, and then secures the doors behind them both.
It’s a good idea to spend the night with Glenn and the kids and Kevin too, since he can’t have some without the other. It’s a true darkness they’re in tonight, and electricity will be hard to come by in the future. Vitamin D deficiency will be real, constant seasonal affective disorder maybe; if they ever see the sun again after all this it’ll probably blind them. Oh well.
The ground that they’re nested in starts to move. It doesn’t rumble or shake, nothing is displaced, but it’s possible to feel the rock around them humming with far-away impacts. It’s really happening. Instead of allowing himself to hyperventilate, or to start thinking of a thousand different ways they could die even if they don’t get a direct hit or slowly poisoned by radiation, Greg just listens to Glenn’s story, the one he’s telling his children about what’s happening and why they’re going to be okay. They’re all in bed together, Glenn in the middle, with Malakai between him and Kevin, and little Thomas between Glenn and Greg. Thomas listens to the story in Greg’s arms until it ends happily, with all of them in this forever-fort they’ve made, but then the vibration of the stone around them starts to shimmy uncomfortably through their teeth. Thomas turns in the darkness, feels for Greg’s face, for his ear, and then holds onto it gently to whisper and ask him, “Do you believe it?”
Greg smiles, and Thomas’s small hands feel his face to confirm that he’s smiling without tears, and Greg finds his ear to whisper back. “I do, I have to.” Thomas then kisses his cheek and tells him a secret.
“I believe you,” Thomas says before nestling back between Greg and Glenn for sleep. Greg’s never lied to him, and he knows it. Glenn’s a big one for white lies when it comes to his children, but not Greg, it means too much to him that a kid can trust him. That’s the kind of parent he wants to be for his own kids.
Greg holds on to Glenn and Thomas as he closes his eyes, intending to dream about a bunker filled with kids like Thomas, and a future of playing house with his best friend for the rest of his life. If he dies before he wakes, he’ll die happy, but if he lives to wake again, he’ll be even happier—he’s sure of that now.
17. Sam Loves His Boy
Retired to their own little room, Sam assumes that once he and Clarkie cuddle up they’ll stay there the rest of the night—clingy, comforting, all that lovey jazz. He’s been lucky with his vasectomy reversal procedure so far. He took it easy for at least twenty-four hours, iced the area (that was the worst of it), and of course he knows exactly how to rely on pills to keep the edge off the pain without doing liver damage. He was able to help with the move, at least, with Clarkie especially picking up his slack in lifting heavy stuff, all to keep injury at bay and to keep Jeff from noticing that something’s changed and asking questions that would lead him to learning about the state of Sam’s balls. Sam would rather not have that conversation with Jeff, if it’s up to personal preference.
But even though they still can’t fuck, or at least Sam can’t, he still imagined they would spend the whole night in bed. However, as soon as the mountain around them starts to hum, Clarkie gets up and starts moving restlessly around the pitch-dark room, like an agitated cat. He’s walking the corners of the room, there’s no furniture besides the bed in the center, so he just slides along the walls from corner to corner, like he’s a blind man measuring the dimensions of the space or something. Sam doesn’t want to tell him to stop, but he wishes he would, or at least talk to him during it. That’s what Sam requests.
“Talk to me, Clarkie.”
From the corner he’s in at the moment, Clarkie sighs. Sam wonders if the kid won’t just ignore him—it’s not like Sam knows him well enough to really predict his behavior one way or another, but he did assume he wouldn’t be ignored and dismissed, and he’s right. After a moment, Clarkie speaks.
“These walls are lined with lead, you know, not on the inside, right, but there’s a layer of it in there. Kevin says he was looking for Cold War panic rooms, Alex said this might have been a big scale one. Or not even a panic room, it’s too big for that, this might have been an undercover kind of hideaway for important people on the east coast in case the bomb dropped, it’s not like New England is known for its mining operati
ons—we’re not exactly in Rust Belt territory here. It’s not built for what it appears to be, is what I mean. Alex speculated that maybe they buried one of the weapons here, that this place wasn’t digging for metals or stone, it was for loading a really big gun. Maybe that’s the vibration we’re feeling. Good news if it is; bombs never hit the places they launch from. If we’re the origin, somewhere else is the destination.”
Clarkie knows way more than he’s told anyone about this place, stuff he heard Alex say, and maybe even stuff he picked up from snooping though Alex’s maps. Or maybe not snooping, maybe this is what they perused at breakfast like two average people might sit reading the paper. Clarkie goes on.
“Eventually we’ll be able to store enough energy in batteries to keep a low level of light going all through the hallways. The grow room needs a reliable supply of those sun lamps. We will all want to work in there, we’ll need to, just to be under the lamps ourselves. Alex was thinking daily rotation. Unless someone had a special job that needed undivided attention, and that would have been his territory had he made it, now it’s most likely Kevin’s, otherwise we’ll all just do two hours in each room. Grow room work, the electricity bikes, break for lunch, the kitchen. Someone would be on the clock in every room. Maybe someone wants to run the kitchen exclusively? But Alex said it would be better to keep to shifts. We all need exercise, we all need sunlight, we all need to know how each station works in case one of us croaks, we’re a unit, not a team, we need to be interchangeable.”
“You should tell all of this to Kevin, you know.”
“I’m sure I will,” Clarkie says, still sliding along the walls, which seems to settle his nerves, because his voice is steadier. Or maybe it’s the talking that’s calming him; Sam’s not a doctor, he never even played one on TV. “Or I can tell you, and you can tell Kevin. I don’t really like Kevin, and I don’t think he’s a huge fan of me either. He’s pissed that I didn’t tell him about this place sooner, not that he has a right to be, it was my knowledge to give. If Alex wanted him to know all of this, he could have left a note or something. I think that’s Kevin’s biggest gripe with me: Alex. He really liked him once, didn’t he?”
Sam nods, though Clarkie can’t see him. “He looked at Alex like a big brother, even though Alex is a few months younger than him, or was, or whatever. It really unsettled him to think of Alex as unemployed, as a charity case. It probably bothers him even more that Alex was no such thing, but still let Kevin assume all that.”
“You and Jeff might want to make sure that Kevin doesn’t go power-mad after a while. It’s not just him, Alex could have easily done it too, and he even admitted it. Everyone has to learn how everything works in this place. No one can hoard knowledge, because forget the psychology of it, anybody can have an aneurism, and if it’s Kevin we all die unless we know how to operate this place. Pitch it to him like that, will you? Tell him to think of his kids.”
Sam smiles. Clarkie’s building a bit of a boogeyman out of Kevin right now. That should even out once they all get into a new routine. Alex’s routine sounds pretty good—the place is named Alexandria, they might as well start with his plans and modify as needed—but already it sounds like they’ll get evenings off when everything’s going smoothly. Too bad there won’t be anything to drink or do, besides each other.
Clarkie sighs again and comes back to the bed. They won’t have to wait too long for Sam to heal. The good doctor, wherever he is right now, told him he could start having sex again as soon as he felt up to it, a few days to a week, generally, but Sam wants to make sure he gives it a full week at least, he can’t risk not healing properly in this place. That doesn’t mean, however, that he can’t still participate. When Clarkie lies down, Sam starts blindly exploring his body, feeling for his cock.
“Not too pensive to let off some steam, are you?” Sam asks.
“You’re not up for it yet, though, we agreed,” Clarkie says.
“Yeah, but you are,” Sam says. Clarkie’s up for it in the literal sense, he’s already responding to being pawed and explored in the dark. This will be interesting, because there isn’t really an option to shower yet, though everyone knows where the bathroom is, and the toilets are open for use. That’ll probably be priority one tomorrow: sort the food and get the bathroom in order, then we can talk about underground farming and whatnot.
Sam pulls down Clarkie’s sweatpants—it’s a tad chilly underground even in trapped, close quarters—taking the waistband down to his knees and then lifting his knees by the fabric.
“Hold this, please,” Sam says, and Clarkie pulls his pants down to his chest, like his knees are in a slingshot. Now Sam has the access he wants.
Parting the even seam of the boy, Sam starts licking his asshole until it’s easy to slide a finger, and then two, inside. Then he takes his mouth up the shaft and lets Clarkie fill him where his tonsils used to be. For a second it occurs to him: tonsils, wisdom teeth, appendixes; it might get seriously gnarly living in isolation like this the longer they keep it up, but then he shuts that out of his mind. What’s done is done now when it comes to their supplies and their know-how, and there’s no use worrying about things that might never happen. Worry if they arise, but otherwise save your energy for better uses.
Like making this boy moan, for example, making him forget his racing thoughts of Alex for a bit, his paranoia about how this new society will be structured. Sam will relay his messages to Kevin, and he’ll certainly keep Kevin in check when it comes to who’s boss around here, especially when it comes to Clarkie.
Clarkie’s cock is a rod of silk in Sam’s mouth, and Sam’s fingers slip against his insides, trying to find the trigger that will set him off. Sam can’t even remember the last time he was in a room this dark, it’s like being in a semi-sensory deprivation chamber. There is no moon, no streetlight, no window, no crack under the door, no light from an alarm clock or a charging battery, literally nothing. It certainly helps him focus on only what he can feel.
His fingers inside of Clarkie start to feel slick as he gets a pumping rhythm going, and Sam spends a lot of time lipping and licking Clarkie’s cock, because he can’t rely on his eyes for any information whatsoever. It’s so vital, so vulnerable when out of context like this, it’s less like sucking his cock and more like swallowing his heart. When Clarkie hits the crest of his pleasure and Sam swallows all that he can, he feels his way up Clarkie’s thighs and hips during it, sculpting a picture in his mind. It’s pretty hot, he won’t always mind this pure darkness so long as it isn’t constant. It makes him pay a different kind of attention to what he’s doing, makes the same old thing feel new again.
Sam crawls up and lies next to Clarkie after he’s spent, and Clarkie turns over and feels for his face to kiss him.
“What can I do for you?” Clarkie asks. “Tell me.”
“Don’t worry. I mean I’m obviously turned on, but I’ll live, I really don’t want to pop a stitch tonight of all nights.”
Clarkie laughs somewhere in the dark and says, “Okay, that’s smart I guess.” He settles onto Sam’s chest after that and they go quiet for a moment. Then Sam has a few questions that haven’t left his mind yet because he hasn’t recently orgasmed—he’s still preoccupied and Clarkie might be relaxed enough to be open with him.
“Is it always going to be weird that this place is named after Alex?”
Clarkie sighs against him. “Probably. I really didn’t know him that well, you know, it’s just that he’s the most dramatic hook-up I’ve ever had. I’ve still never been in love, not with you quite yet, not with anyone, but Alex is the only one who’s ever died on me, and I’m sure I meant something quite a bit different to him, I was the last branch he was hanging onto—all his other friends, you guys, you couldn’t be there with him, with what he knew.”
“Maybe Kevin …?” Sam tries to say, trying to defend the group as a whole by saying maybe Alex could have reached out to one of them and through that gotten support from the
rest, but … Sam sort of doubts himself even as he speaks.
“That’s what Kevin thinks too, that he would have been so understanding—he thinks what he wants to believe with that. He forgets that I’ve known him only since Alex lost his job; whatever Kevin was like in college, that’s not what he was in the end for Alex.”
“Hmm,” Sam grumbles. He can’t really argue with Clarkie, because they all are different from what they were in college, worse than they used to be, because life’s been wearing them down. Kevin’s uncomfortable with how he thought of Alex towards the end, and he really better not take that out on Clarkie. This kid’s been through a lot too, and he’s not surrounded by his best friends and his loving family like Kevin is, he’s alone, except for Sam. That’s how he was on day one of the funeral too—alone—and none of Alex’s good friends really went out of their way to be kind to him. That’s bad on them, but not on Sam. Sam spared a thought or two for Clarkie, and maybe that’s the reason they’re all in this bunker right now—if Clarkie hadn’t chosen to be here, none of them would be here. Kevin will need to be reminded of that the right way a few times, maybe Clarkie is right about him needing to be managed a bit at the outset of their new world.
Sam rolls Clarkie off of him and then gets on top of him, kisses him a few times before making him a promise.
“You don’t worry about the future here, okay? If you think my loyalties will be split between you and my friends, put that out your head, because I love you, I’m sure about it. I wish I could look you in the eye right now, I mean I guess I am, we just can’t see each other, but … I don’t know what it is about you, but I felt it right away, could you tell? Did you feel anything? I mean, kiddo, why did I make sure you were okay after the funeral? Why did you come to me in the woods? We’ve got something here, and I know that there’s a ghost of Alex in between us a bit, but Clark, I swear I’ll—”