by Travis Tufo
“What is it man?” the smelly Joe finally asked.
“Oh nothing...I just thought I had a bloody nose coming.” Eli didn’t want to hurt the guy’s feelings.
“Oh. Well here, take this, buddy.” Joe reached in his pocket and pulled out a clearly used bandana. It looked exactly how Eli figured it would, coming from a man like Joe. Eli gave a blank look, removed his fingers from his nose, and humbly declined. From that point on, he took as few breaths as he could.
THE PLANE FINALLY landed, and the passengers shifted uncomfortably during the fifteen minutes of gear prep and the captain’s bullshit spiel about how happy he was he’d got to fly with them. Eli knew damn well that captain wasn’t happy about his passengers. He meant he was happy he was making six figures for sitting in a seat while a plane auto-piloted itself across the sky. Or at least, that’s how Eli saw it. Finally getting off the plane, Eli noticed something interesting. Denver airport was an entire continent compared to Bangor, where Eli had just landed. Bangor airport was more like a bus stop.
“What; does this place have like, three planes?” He was blown away by the fact that it wasn’t even crowded. But locals loved it. It was so easy to get from there to anywhere you wanted to go: the next terminal, the front entrance, off to a hub, or wherever. There couldn’t have been twenty people working in the whole place, and on top of that, only one of those twenty members was Security.
“This is…” Eli took a moment to look around, “...refreshing.”
It was great to have his own breathing space. If he wanted to, he could hold his arms out and run around like a bird, never bumping into anyone. Before Eli got any more sidetracked by his environment, he set his head back on the goal: getting to his parents’ house. As he walked outside, he noticed something about the air—how much there was! He took a deep breath and it felt so right, as he was no longer a mile high in the smog of Denver. If he soaked in any more of the good vibes, he might never make any progress, so he forced himself down the road outside to the rental car station. It was Budget; he figured he was going to have to drop a fortune on this car, not because they were expensive, but because twenty dollars was a fortune to him at this point in life. After just a few steps into the process of renting a vehicle, the clerk he was working with said, “Oh you’re Eli! We have been wondering if you were ever going to show up.” Eli looked at the clerk puzzled. What did this guy mean by “ever?” And how did he know Eli?
“Oh dear...you are Eli, right?” Eli slowly nodded yes.
“You must have no idea what I’m talking about. Officer Daniels called earlier and told us that whatever you rent was on him. He made sure to let us know we had to tell you that there were no price restrictions or anything. It’s all on him. Oh, and that we aren’t allowed to let you leave unless you sign up for the insurance.” The clerk just smiled at Eli’s blank expression.
Eli slowly grinned, Daniels had always been like another father to Eli. He never knew why the cop treated him so well; maybe he saw something in Eli that Eli had never seen in himself.
MOMENTS PASSED, AND in a breeze Eli was driving off the lot in a brand new Mustang. This was the best Eli had ever been living, cruising down the highway in a gorgeous car, hell the thing even had a Garmin GPS, which was pretty high status to Eli. The Garmin sure served its usefulness, as once he left the airport, Bangor had a lot more green than buildings. He found himself driving on all kinds of back roads, sometimes not seeing any sign of life for at least ten miles. Maine felt like a strange place, coming from crowded-living Denver to really rural Swanville. It was like a different world. A person couldn’t walk down the road and grab a bite to eat at Taco Bell, but at the same time, there was the beauty of seeing nature as it’s supposed to be, not in some monitored park.
THE DRIVE SEEMED to take forever, not because it was so far away, but because he knew he didn’t want to show up to his now deceased parents’ home without them there. He pulled into the driveway slowly while shutting the radio off. It was dead silent and rather peaceful. He looked around and nothing seemed to have changed since the last time he was there, which was years ago. He walked around the front yard for a while, soaking in the scenery. The house was one of only about six homes on the entire road, which meant that the “neighbors” were about five hundred yards away in either direction. There were no anonymous blocks of apartments as far as he could see.
Eli seemed to be stalling; he was now standing in the driveway, just looking up at the empty garage. He was thinking back to a conversation he had with his parents. They had wanted to spend some money to redo the garage and turn it into an apartment for Eli to live in, at least until he had his feet underneath him. Of course, Eli was too proud to let someone hand him something like that. He declined their offer and remained in Colorado. He had always secretly regretted not taking the offer, but never as much as he was regretting it right now. He held back tears as he placed one hand on the side of the garage. He looked over to the house, his next hurdle to conquer. Slowly trudging his way over to the front porch, he felt a heavy weight on his shoulders which intensified as he neared the front door. Those butterflies were stirring up a hurricane in his stomach and he felt nauseated. He stood there, motionless in front of the door, not knowing what to do next. He couldn’t knock—there would be no answer. Yet he felt wrong just walking in. That’s when he saw the note taped to the door. He grabbed it; immediately he saw that it was from his uncle Max. He had written to tell Eli how sorry he was that he couldn’t meet him there today because of a domestic disturbance call earlier that went bad. He was a friend of Officer Daniels; they’d gone to school together in Denver; Eli thought maybe that’s why Daniels had taken an interest in his life. He’d left the keys for Eli underneath the doormat, and would drop in later to check on him. It would have been hard enough to enter the house with his uncle by his side; now he had to do it alone.
WITH A HEAVY hand, and feeling rather dizzy, he moved the doormat aside, and sure enough, there were the keys. He would be terrified to leave the keys to his room outside his apartment. He unlocked the door and swung it open quickly to just get it over with. The door slammed against the wall inside and remained wide open, awaiting Eli’s entry. A cold rush of air flowed out of the house and hit Eli, who got goose bumps. It was a strange sensation, creepy, yet somehow comforting. He knew he’d held off long enough, and walked into the house. He made his way all around their home, smiling when he saw something that reminded him of a time he had been with them, crying hard when he saw a picture of the three of them together. The whole scene caused a roller coaster of emotions, mostly dipping into the crying side, not helping his depression. He made his way to the third floor where his mother’s office was by itself at the top of the house, up a spiral staircase.
It was a nice room, decorated in dark blue and white, tidy and simple, but the main attraction was the window. A large, circular window took up most of the farthest wall from the door. It had the best view of their backyard and down the road to the lake. He stood there watching the high clouds reflect the light from the sunset through that beautiful window, setting over the lake. He could almost feel his mother’s presence there, viewing it with him. He looked to her red cherry desk. Immediately he remembered her desk back in Colorado, how it always had a drawer dedicated to pictures of him when he was a baby. He smiled and thought to himself that there was no way she still had a drawer for him. He reached the desk and moved around the clutter of paper; no sign of any pictures yet. There were four drawers, stacked one on top of another. He opened the first one to find nothing but work related paperwork and all sorts of dividers. He shrugged, as he knew there wouldn’t be any pictures in the first one. He slowly opened the second drawer; he was met with nothing but receipts and tax related paperwork. He nodded and closed that one as well. As he reached for the final two drawers, he noticed how much dust was on the third one; the last drawer had no dust on it, like it had been in use recently. He grabbed the handle and threw the third dra
wer open, revealing pictures piled on top of each other, there had to be hundreds. He grinned from ear to ear and took a seat on the floor, letting out a laugh of relief. He reached both hands into the drawer and withdrew a huge stack of pictures and threw them on the ground before him. For the next hour, he continued this trend until he had seen every last picture, ranging from him in a stroller to his parents as children still in braces and in their first Halloween costumes. Before he started to gather the pictures to put them back in the drawer, he first took a quick peek inside to see if he had missed any. There were none left, however, there sat a small black box he hadn’t noticed before. He was confused as to how he could have missed it. What the hell? he thought and grabbed it. When he opened the box, a small key, a bottle of pills, and a piece of paper folded up to the size of a sticky note fell out. He reached down and grabbed the items. He first grabbed the pills.
“The good stuff?” he asked himself trying to find a label.
“Valium! What the hell mom?” He replaced the over-the-counter pills in his pocket with this bottle of potent drugs. “I don’t even know if I could have dropped myself with Advil.” He then opened the paper, nearly forgetting about the bottle. It contained a small map and notes about some underground bunker.
“Wait, let me read this again,” he said. “This is the key to the bunker in the yard.”
“Are you kidding me?” he yelled, after reading his dad’s handwriting out loud.
“They never told me about any damn bunker. And what the hell did they need a bunker for?” Eli was now shocked and confused on top of the countless other emotions he was struggling with. He found himself flying down the stairs and rushing outside to the backyard. He quickly glanced around, wondering if he should be looking for cameras to see if someone was messing with him. He walked around the large, wide open backyard, which was over an acre of flat grass with a few trees thrown into the mix. There was a shed filled with gardening tools, a garden plot filled with ripe vegetables, and an above-ground pool. Other than that, all he could see was a whole lot of green.
“This is a joke, I just know it.” After giving up his search, he returned to his parents’ house, this time going to his father’s office on the first floor, where there were all sorts of toys and military related goodies. The first thing that caught his attention was the enormous steel safe in the corner. The safe could quite literally fit a family inside.
“I bet there’s an entire arsenal in there,” Eli said, having to refrain from drooling. He put a hand on the handle, and hoped to god it was going to turn, though he knew it wouldn’t. He added a little pressure and the handle moved down slightly.
“No way!” Eli got a rush of adrenaline, however, it was quickly stolen from him as the handle hit the lock.
“Damn it, I knew it!” He hit the front of the safe with an open hand and headed off to his father’s desk. He didn’t find anything too spectacular; nothing related to the “bunker” outside. For a few more minutes he messed around with the zombie props and items in the office, then headed for the door. Before he made it all the way out, something just barely caught his peripheral vision, something shiny.
“More toys?” Eli grinned as he diverted his attention to the shining object. It was a small ring lying on the floor underneath the desk, where his father’s feet would have been while he sat. Eli crouched down and reached for the ring, but when he wrapped his finger around it, he realized that he couldn’t pick it up off the ground.
“What the…?” He gave another tug. This time it moved a little bit. He attempted again, bracing himself for a good pull. With a fair bit of force, he pulled the ring right out of the ground, but with it came part of the wooden flooring.
“Oh shit. There goes the resale value.” It was a joke, but with a hint of seriousness.
“What the hell is this? A wooden panel with a metal ring screwed into it? I knew he was a strange man, but…” Eli looked over to the hole he had exposed. Crawling closer to the opening, he could see that he hadn’t ripped the floor up, but instead he’d uncovered a compartment, a stash his father had created. He reached inside, feeling more than one handful of stuff. The first item he pulled out was a large stack of cash.
“Are you kidding me? Where was this a few days ago? This is at least a grand!” Since the first handful was such a success, he reached right back in there. This time he came back with a small slip of paper, but instead of reading it, he continued on, hoping for more cash or something even better. He pulled out a large knife next, and then a book.
“Hmm. This quickly got less and less exciting.” He looked at the book, it was a survival manual. Eli had no interest in it, so he flipped back to the slip of paper. Unfolding it, he realized it was about the bunker. It was a sketch of the inside. It didn’t reveal its location, but above the sketch of the layout was the word “POOL” written in bold print.
“Wait…it’s not…” Eli grabbed the knife and ran to the back door, leaving behind the stack of cash. He could have been mistaken for a track star, the way he sprinted to the pool standing in the middle of their large backyard. Out of breath, he stumbled and searched around the pool for signs of any digging or hints to the bunker’s whereabouts. Without success, he pushed his back against the plastic siding and slid down it to sit on the grass. He sat there thinking for a little while, wondering what in the world was going on. Moments passed with no more sound than the wind blowing around him. He pulled the knife up to his face to get a better look at it, and then a crazy thought crossed his mind. Without hesitation and with one quick movement he swung it into the pool wall behind him. Immediately it ripped open and water came gushing out. The water flowed so fast and crashed against him so hard, that it actually pushed him backwards about four feet. Chlorinated water continued to flood the grass in a progressively wider circle until there was nothing more than a large, flat tarp and a few metal poles on the ground. Eli, now soaked from head to toe, pushed himself to his feet. The grass underneath his steps sank into the deep layer of water as he trudged towards the pool remains. He just stood there for a moment thinking how absolutely crazy this idea was, but what the hell? He bent down and started to pull the plastic walling away from its spot. Using all his strength, he managed to drag it about two feet, just enough to reveal the corner of something metal. The second his eye caught a glimpse of that edge, he dropped the pool and ran to see what it was. He knelt down next to what looked to be the corner of a trapdoor. It was very thick, smooth metal. He managed to heave the rest of the pool aside to uncover the whole door. It was at least eight feet square, and to Eli, it seemed otherworldly. The first thing that stuck out to him about the door was the impressive large lock. In his excitement, he had almost forgotten the key he’d stuck in his back pocket. He pulled the key out and slid it into the lock. He held it there, afraid to turn it in case it didn’t work; like a kid going to Disney World, he had never been so excited, or so nervous. He closed his eyes. One quick twist to the right and the clicking noise that came next was more satisfying than any touchdown he had ever scored. With all his might, he grabbed the handle and lifted, opening the extremely heavy door. It wasn’t quite what he’d imagined; no fog poured out, nothing screamed at him from below, but it was still the most unbelievable thing he had ever seen.
“Why didn’t they ever tell me about this?” Eli took his first of many steps down into the dark bunker.
“I’ve seen this in a movie, I swear.” He could hear his voice echoing below him.
Chapter Seven
HE GOT TO the cavernous room at the bottom, where he felt a panel of switches on the wall. He hit the top one, and couldn’t believe his eyes as low wattage light filled the room. To his right were crates filled with every single essential a person would need to survive there. Enough canned and dried food for two families to live on for years, enough water, cleaning supplies, candles, anything he could think of—he knew he could find it in one of the many crates. To his left was a television, some bunk beds, comfor
table chairs, a large dining set, and a set of wooden shelves filled with books, puzzles, and board games.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. My parents’ crazy person survivalist hole is better living than my apartment! They could have rented this place out. Hell, I would have lived here! I wonder if this TV works.” He flipped the switch and sure as hell, it came on. It was the BBC News, talking about something gone terribly wrong.
“What a surprise.” Sarcasm dripped from his mouth. He now turned his attention to one of the crates. From the moment he had made it down there, this one had stood out to him, but there had been too much going on to react immediately. Now, the crate called to him loudly: “SNACKS” was printed on the label. He made his way over with amazing agility.
“Even during the apocalypse they have time for goodies,” Eli snickered as he reached inside the crate and pulled out the first thing he touched. It was a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. A fairly good find.