33 Degrees of Separation (Legacy)

by Rain Carrington

  They left in a crowd, Ian in a hoodie and being led by a few of Cara’s friends. Pat wasn’t to follow; he was too conspicuous with his size. The group drove Ian to a set location in the city, where they pulled into a parking garage and they let Ian out, only to jump into the car that pulled up right away, Javi driving.

  Pat was on the burner phone Javi held out to him, and Ian had never been so glad to hear his voice. “Pat, I’m thinking too much. I can’t keep anything straight. Help me, please?”

  “Yes, baby, you know I will. First, Ian, tell me everything you know about the bunker you’re going to.”

  Ian wanted to scream at him. “What?”

  “I need to know everything your father told you about the bunker, starting from the moment of its conception.”

  It was crazy, but Ian went through the millions of things he had spinning in his mind and pulled out the conversation with his father about the bunker in the mountains where Javi was taking him.

  “It, uh, after the government made NORAD, it gave the Grails an idea. If they made a bunker like that, it could be so much more than a simple place to hide in case they lost control of things and needed to hide. They could place all their sacred items there and keep it safe for the future of the Grail.

  “It was planned and built to be stronger than NORAD in many ways. There is ten foot of solid lead in the floors, ceiling and walls. An air filtration that can clean even the strongest radiation levels, and chemical weapons. Enough food to last all the families for five years, as well as accommodations for them and their families for as long. That’s on the bottom floor, but the top, where I’ll go, that’s where the Grail truly lives. At least that’s what Father said.”

  “What does that mean, Ian?”

  He’d told Pat all of this, but he repeated what he knew. “Their books, their oldest laws, their texts for the future, all of it. It’s all kept there, and it is always in a vault, which will take my facial recognition to enter as well as the grail of my family.”

  “Very good, baby. Now, what are you supposed to do when you first arrive?”

  He understood being prepared, but they’d gone over that a million times too. “I let Javi off and drive myself to the bunker entrance. I take the grail from the trunk and use it to enter. Once inside, I go down the long corridor to the elevator, then head to the top floor. Once there, I go to the right, then left and there will be a massive set of double doors. That, again, will take my grail as a key. Inside, the copies of the original Grail missives are in the fourth cabinet under the great seal of the Grail.”

  “Now, how do you feel? Are you able to remember all you have to do, or is it still a jumble?”

  Ian opened his mouth, then it snapped shut as he glanced over at Javi, who was laughing at him. It was well deserved. “So, you did that on purpose to mellow me out?”

  “Yeah. It worked, huh?”

  “If I didn’t love you, and your dick, I’d kick you there when I see you next.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  In the mountains, Ian knew the Grail, or rather, one of the many Grail companies owned a thousand acres surrounding and containing the bunker. There was a gate at the entrance to the property, and Javi pulled off a hundred feet from it.

  “Mijo, this is all you now. You got this?”

  Ian stared into the dark forest ahead of them, the dirt road curving gently around the bend beckoning him. “I got this.”

  “I’ll be waiting right here. You got your phone and I’ll be watching, as well as I can.”

  Leaving Javi there, going on his own, Ian didn’t know if his feet could carry him. Standing on his own, it wasn’t something he was used to doing. “Javi…I’m scared.”

  “You’d be stupid if you weren’t.”

  Heading to the gate in the car, he thought for a moment he had forgotten how to drive. He knew he was going too slow, but every time he sped up, he thought his heart was matching it. It was already pounding out of his chest.

  He got the grail from the trunk, walked to the keypad and set the grail in the depression. Lasers sought out the grail and it took a few seconds, making Ian dizzy with worry, but then he heard the click of the gate at the same time he saw the green light in the key panel.

  He drove through, the gate shutting automatically behind him. Ian gave himself a pep talk, hearing it in his mind in Pat’s voice. It was true, though, and he smiled as he thought of Pat’s little game to get his mind straight. He was no longer jumbled, keeping his mind on the order of things he needed to do.

  Parking off to the side, the mountain came to a stop. He didn’t see a door, gate or anything to indicate there was an entrance, but Ian expected that. His father had warned of that, the entrance camouflaged in the foliage and rock of the side of the mountain.

  After stepping from the car, he moved slowly to the place where the road stopped. The sheer face of the short cliff, a tree down the center, right in front. It was remarkable, something manmade that looked so natural. Ian set his hand on the tree, and the bark felt like any other tree he’d ever touched.

  “Fucking crazy.”

  Under the branch five foot up on the right side of the tree, Ian felt along that fake bark, and soon felt the small button his father told him about, pressing it.

  Silently, another compartment came open and Ian set the grail there, then looked up into the dim light that shone on his face. Sucking in his breath, he waited, worried that Matthew’s makeup wouldn’t be good enough, that his face would be one centimeter off what it should be, and he’d not only be barred from access, he’d be run down and killed.

  It seemed to take forever, all the while his breath was held and his heart thrumming painfully fast. He wondered if anyone had truly had a heart attack from being nervous. Probably, but not at twenty-seven years old.

  When the mountain opened, he watched in amazement. What money couldn’t buy, he thought, mostly in derision. As soon as the spot of the cliff had disappeared into the rest of the side, there was a door, and he went to it, looking into the light there. Again, he tensed, waiting for the facial recognition software to check that he was who he said he was.

  The audible click of the lock disengaging slowed his heart a little, staving off death by coronary for the moment.

  The corridor his father mentioned was there, and it was much different than Ian had imagined. There was no marble or gold. It was concrete and pipes, the piping running on the ceiling, the walls were cement and thick brick.

  Of course, it looked like it probably was supposed to, but he hadn’t experienced anything the Grail did that wasn’t covered in gold and jewels and all the finery. It calmed him, for some strange reason, and he started rushing down the corridor, turning as he was instructed.

  When he came to the elevator, he stepped in and pressed the button for the first floor, gazing around the car, looking for surveillance. There was none. One good thing about the bunker was the lack of that. The top brass of the Grail did not want to be watched. They were paranoid and didn’t want any chance of hacking to occur. No recordings, no cameras or guards. When they went to the bunker, it was for secret things.

  The car stopped on the top floor, and Ian hurried out to the room he was told to head to, finding it quickly. The sign on the door asked the member entering to please wear the vinyl gloves provided if they were going to touch the books. Ian knew why. Human hands had oils that were death to old paper.

  Inside, the air was cool and dry. The temperature was regulated perfectly for the books, and even then, most of them were behind glass doors. The shelving on the walls were lined with ancient tomes, thick books that would have likely crumbled if not for the care the room had provided.

  It smelled of books, old ones, and Ian did take a moment to appreciate that, but remembered all too quickly what the books in that room contained. They were instructions on ruling the world while leaving the rest of humanity behind to fight for the scraps.

  The cabinet his father described was there, unde
r one long shelf of the tomes. He opened it to find neat stacks of newer books. As he took some of them out, he knew they were the ones he was looking for. They were hand typed reproductions of the original tomes.

  He didn’t need them all, so he checked the covers quickly. The one he was looking for had to do with the culling. It was near the bottom of the stack, and the title on the cover read simply, Fin. The end.

  They didn’t mean the end of times, however, at least not for them. The end for the rest. They’d learned, collected and let things run until a time when they could take over while people were all looking the other way.

  It was a book at least a foot thick, and two foot long. He set his hand over it after setting the other books back and he thought he could feel the evil coming from each word inside the cover.

  Shivering, he opened it, determined to make sure he was getting the right book. It was. The middle page he flipped to was talking about the lists. Lists were to be made of those that the Grail would deem beneficial to the Grail after the culling. Other lists included those that sought out people who would best suit other areas, like security and labor.

  Ian slammed the book shut and felt bile rising, the thought of his own family being a part of it again making him sick. He took the book and started out of the room, thinking to head back out and be done with it, glad he was getting away unscathed, but something stopped him. There were other doors, and his father hadn’t been there for a year or more. He wouldn’t know what stood behind those doors.

  The first was nothing except a lounge, nice furnishings and other books, first editions of classics. A library that held words that didn’t point to the demise of most of humanity.

  Other doors held bathrooms, kitchens, and down another corridor, there were whole apartments. Then, when he checked one more door, tiring of the search, he found what he was looking for.

  It was a storage room, but it didn’t hold cleaning supplies or food. There were long crates down the middle of the concrete room. Brand new crates, without a speck of dust. Some were stacked higher than his head, but there were two that were singly on the floor, one of them looked to be recently opened.

  He took the top from that one, and he saw boxes with lines of vials. Ian pulled back, terror chilling him like he’d fallen through ice. He knew what it was. It was the virus.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” he whispered, but the sound was explosive in the room, the echo of the whisper making him jump. “Fuck. What do I do?”

  He looked around the room, looking for a clue as to what he should do when a stack of files on a table at the other end of the room caught his eye. He got down there, and he moaned as he saw what they were. The lists he’d just been reading about were there, folders of names and addresses, social security numbers.

  There was a stack just for the labor. There was recent medical records and physicals required for insurance. He leafed through, seeing some of them had families, and only some of the families were okayed for the vaccine.

  There were other folders for potential saves. Those that would be deemed beneficial to the Grail if saved. In that set of folders, he found his own name and the list of those that Ian was supposed to check out and evaluate for saving.

  When he noticed there were copies, he grabbed as many as he could, shoving them inside the pages of the book he carried. Once that was done, he looked around the room to see if there was anything else he could take.

  He was sickened beyond anything he’d ever felt, and he suddenly wanted out of there, to run and never stop running. His eyes lit back on the crates, and he saw one labeled vaccine. There were crates and crates of the virus and he saw only one labeled vaccine. “Sick fucks.”

  Once he sat the book down on the table, he climbed on the metal chair that was under the table with the folders and pried open one of the boards keeping the vaccine crate closed. He thought he’d need a crowbar or hammer, but in the state he was in, the board came up with little effort.

  He took out one of the vials, though they looked exactly like the others. He placed it in his pocket, though he was sure Pat and Javi would have a fit about it, and he got the board back into place.

  When he was on his way out, he turned to take another look at the vile place. The bunker, the place where they’d hide in the event a terrible happening overcame the world. The same kind of terrible happening they wanted to create.

  It gave him another idea. It was a terrible idea, a dark idea, but he couldn’t shake it.

  Once he was out of the building, the entrance slid shut and he hurried to the car, driving like a maniac down the dirt road and nearly hitting the gate before slamming his brakes.

  He watched for Javi on the side of the road and once he spotted him, threw the transmission into park and moved over to the passenger seat. He set the book on the seat between he and Javi and set his hand over his jacket pocket, where he’d placed the vile.

  “It went okay?”

  “Yeah, sure, no one was there, at least that I saw. Father said they’d all be at the party, so I guess it worked.”

  “You guess?”

  He wanted to tell Javi, but he knew the explosion that would create from the fiery Latino. Then, thinking of telling Pat made his balls creep up into his stomach.

  Javi knew something was going on, and as soon as he found a place to pull off the road, he did so and started badgering Ian. “Tell me what the fuck happened? You’re pale, even for a white boy, and you’re shaking.”

  “I was nervous, okay?”

  “Ian, you won’t look me in the eye, and that ain’t like you, man. Talk to me. Did you break something? Were you seen?”

  “No. And no.”

  “Then what? Mijo, talk to me.”

  Ian glanced over at him, and knew, of the two of them, he’d be the better choice to tell first than Pat would be. “I took something that wasn’t exactly on our list of things to take.”

  Javi groaned and asked, “Something they’ll miss?”

  Ian swallowed, hoping he could talk at all. When he did, it was a croak. “Uh, yeah. They might. There were a lot of them, but as precise as they seem to always be…yeah they probably will miss it.”

  “Fucking hell, Ian! What did you take? We have the time, go put it back, man! We need a little time to get all three thousand of those army dudes convinced, man!”

  Taking the vial from his pocket, Ian held it up to Javi. “It’s the vaccine for the virus. Looks to be enough for a hundred people, and there was a whole crate of it.”

  Javi took the vial from him, his words cut off in a squeak. “Shit,” he finally said, then repeated it a few more times.

  “I know. I also know what you’re going to say, that I shouldn’t have taken it, but…but I couldn’t help it.”

  Surprisingly, Javi had an entire argument, but not with Ian. It was with himself. “No, you shouldn’t have, they’ll miss this for sure, but damn it, that was fucking genius that you did. Shit, you are gonna get us all caught, but if there is a reason to get caught, I can’t think of a better one. Pat, oh, he’s gonna kill us, and I can’t even imagine what your father is gonna say, but don’t worry, I won’t let them kill you. I might kill you, but I won’t let them do it.”

  Confused as to how he should react to any of that, he chose not to react at all. Taking the book from the seat, he started flipping through the pages, and watching as words like “unnecessary” and “expendable”. People were commodities, not lives. They didn’t care about love, family or joy, only greed.

  “Javi, how can anyone be like this?”

  “Ian, no offense but you act like this is new. You also act like the club you all belong to is the only ones that are like this. Naïve, mijo, that you can’t look around you and see that most of the people you grew up with, that aren’t associated to the Grail, are like that. Anyone without millions in the bank are servants, whether they work for them or not. They’re all expendable. If they’re hungry? Tough. If they’re dying from pollution? Tough. They’re
all like that. The rich have all the wealth in most countries, and the rest fight for the scraps. Just because the Grail wants to scale down the population and make it more obvious to everyone, doesn’t mean it’s not already obvious to us, the ones fighting for the scraps.”

  Ian found it hard to look at him, but he did. “I’m sorry, Javi. I’ve been told I lived in a bubble for a long time.”

  “We all do, mijo, that ain’t your fault. We live how we see, who we live with and where we live. It’s no one’s fault. We perpetuate what we believe to be real. You, you’re seeing outside that bubble, and not many of us can do that.”

  “Yeah, Pat said I’m lucky that I have seen both worlds.”

  “I don’t know about lucky. I think you would have been luckier to stay in your bubble. Now look at the mess you’re in.”

  Javi laughed and he joined in, but it was true. He figured people stayed in their bubbles for exactly that reason, so they didn’t have to see that their bubbles were not the only way to live.

  “Javi, you know, besides Denny, you’re probably the best friend I’ve ever had.”

  “And to think, you hated my ass when you first met me.”

  “You were after my boyfriend!”

  Javi pointed out, “He wasn’t your boyfriend then, and besides, do you blame me?”

  Thinking of Pat, his beautiful body and sweet disposition when he wasn’t all Dom and rough, Ian had to admit, “If I were you, I’d have probably tried a lot harder.”

  “Yeah, but I am sorry about that. He was the one that got away, for sure.”

  He felt a little guilty over that, despite not having known them back then. “You’ll find another guy, Javi, one that makes you even happier.”

  Looking off down the road, Javi whispered, “I doubt I’ll ever find one guy that will make me happy. Well, that’s a lie. One that I can make happy.”