I was absolutely livid, my fear fuelling my anger.
Jeff put both his hands up in a placating gesture and bowed his head.
“Michelle, honey, just hold on one second,” he said, his voice reaching for a completely reasonable tone. “I know you’re upset, but—”
“Upset?” I asked coldly, my voice low. “You grabbed me, shoved me down some stairs, and then locked me in here without any explanation whatsoever. I’m a whole lot more than upset, Jeff.”
I was also terrified. But I wasn’t going to tell him that. I wasn’t going to tell him that one of my first thoughts had been that he was part of the Ilk Krallik cult and had actually just captured me for them, to keep the word from getting out about what they meant to do.
“Michelle, you know me well enough to know I would never hurt you,” he told me quietly. “Are you willing to at least listen to me for a second? If you’re willing to listen, I’ll tell you what’s going on.”
Right. Well, knowing what was going on would be better than not knowing what was going on. This was my uncle, and he’d known me for my entire life. I’d known him for nearly as long as I could remember. So, although my mind was still screaming with paranoia, I let my heart win this one, and nodded slowly.
“Talk.”
He gestured at the room around us, and I finally turned to see that it was more than just a room. The walls were lined with the same sort of metal that I’d seen in the door above, and the place was filled with shelves, tables, and what looked like an enormous refrigerator/freezer unit, plus an oven and stove. I could see hallways leading off in several different directions, and through a doorway to the right, an office that looked to be packed with some kind of equipment.
This wasn’t just a room. He’d built a whole goddamn bunker.
“I’ve been working on this ever since CPS took you away from me,” he started, his hand gently placed on my shoulder. “I’ve known for some time that trouble would come—either for me or for the world. I didn’t want it to catch me by surprise. I didn’t want it to catch those I cared for by surprise. So, I made a plan.”
“You built a bunker,” I said quietly, turning back to look at him. And I was betting he hadn’t spared one single expense in doing so, the crazy old man.
He gave me a nod and a grin.
“A second home,” he clarified. “Here, we have everything we need. I have enough supplies for us to last for years. I can keep us safe. These walls are soundproofed and will provide protection against anything the world out there can throw at us. Viruses. Nuclear winter. Radiation. Nerve agents.”
“You wonderful, wonderful lunatic,” I whispered with a slight chuckle.
I’d always known he was a bit of conspiracy nut, and dabbled in prepping for the world's end. The garden in the backyard, the need to stay off the radar, the hatred of the government—it had all pointed right to something like that. He had always talked about the need for a backup plan. Several of them, really. Safety. Security. I’d taken that motto into account when I'd gotten into hacking, always building myself several escape routes both in the physical and digital world, just in case.
I’d just never realized that Uncle Jeff had actually been truly prepping for the end of the world all these years. I had always thought it was just part of the persona he put on. Something to keep the outside world away. An easy way to explain his eccentricity.
Suddenly, the memory of the outside world came rushing right back into my head like a thunderbolt.
“Oh my God, we can’t just hide down here while no one up there knows what’s going on!” I said, jerking. I grabbed both his shoulders and shook him. “They don’t know, Jeff! We can’t just leave the rest of the world to their own devices. They’re all going to die!”
I couldn’t just hide down here while all the people up on the surface of the planet died. I hadn’t thought I was a hero, but it turned out I was at least a little bit of a good guy. I wanted to do the right thing. I wanted to save the world.
It was damned inconvenient. But that didn’t make it any less true.
But my uncle shook his head and pushed me backward a few steps, his face changing from the kindly uncle to… something a lot darker. His eyes narrowed as he replied.
“We cannot go back up there,” he said firmly. “You came to me with this story. You know exactly what’s about to happen. We can't be up there when it all goes down.”
“But I don’t know for sure it’s going to happen, or when!” I argued, ignoring the fact that my instincts were screaming that it would. “I’ve just seen an idea. It’s just… I don’t know, a sort-of, possible threat!”
His brow furrowed, and his face became even more forbidding. “Then why did you come to me? If you don’t believe it, Michelle, then why did you come to me, frantic for help?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but found that I didn’t have any words, and closed my mouth again, forcing my brain back into action.
“I came to you for help in spreading the word,” I said slowly, punctuating each word with a period. “I wanted people around the world to know about this danger. I wanted to make sure no one was caught unprepared if it did happen. I don’t know for a fact that it’s going to happen. But if it does, I don’t want the rest of the world to be decimated. I don’t want the entire population to be knocked out. I care too much about the people of this earth to allow that.”
When he replied, his voice was just as slow, just as cold. “Those people are no longer your problem. The world itself is no longer your problem. I suggest you turn your thoughts toward taking care of those we’ve brought with us, instead of those we’ve left behind.”
In that moment, he wasn’t the uncle I’d grown up with—the one I’d idolized when I was little. He was someone else entirely. Someone pretty damn frightening.
But then he turned away from me and that other person disappeared as he became, once again, the man I’d known as a child. His face relaxed and he smiled again, gesturing at the people around us.
“I want to introduce you to our little community. When I started planning this, I wanted to make sure that we only brought the best people with us, the people who could help us survive. So I chose carefully.” He gave me a knowing look. “You should feel proud that you are one of the people I made room for here.”
Proud. Right. Terrified was more like it. But I bit my tongue, knowing that saying it wasn’t going to do me any good. I hadn’t wanted to come down here. And I meant to leave—as soon as I could figure out how.
For the time being, that meant keeping my mouth shut, though it was going to be hard. I’d never been good at keeping my thoughts to myself.
Still, I pretended to look interested as he introduced me to a group of people who, now that I looked at them, appeared to be just as confused as I was.
“This is my good friend, Dr. Oliver Green,” Jeff said, gesturing to a freckly man who looked to be in his mid-forties, with greying temples and glasses. The guy was still wearing scrubs and a coat, complete with nametag—so I guessed he’d come right from the hospital. His confused, wary expression didn’t exactly indicate that he’d come intentionally.
“Jeff,” he said quietly. “What the hell am I doing here?”
My uncle waved him off and turned to the woman standing next to him.
“Dr. Simone Kinglsey—a researcher who specializes in biology and chemistry.”
Simone had a dark complexion, most of her face in shadow in the dimly-lit room—which made the whites around her eyes stand out even more. If Dr. Green was confused, Dr. Kingsley was close to terrified.
I wasn’t feeling any better about this situation. In fact, I was starting to get more and more nervous. Jeff had forced me down those stairs, locked me in, and hadn’t once asked me if I wanted to join him. If Dr. Green and Dr. Kingsley’s faces were any indication, he’d done the exact same thing to them. And they weren’t related to him, so he couldn’t say he was saving his family.
Jesus Christ,
was my uncle not only crazy, but also a kidnapper? All signs were pointing toward a big, fat yes.
“And this is Bob Hensley,” he said finally, pointing out the final man—who, I was half-relieved to see, at least looked like he knew what was going on.
The stout man gave my uncle a grin and shook his hand firmly. “Glad to be here, Jeff, glad to be here,” he said roughly.
My uncle gave me a quick grin as well. “Bob is in construction. I figured it was a good idea to have him down here in case we needed any structural work done to the place. I built it myself, after all.”
“And the others?” I asked, trying to contain my fury and confusion.
“A doctor, of course, in case we get sick,” Jeff answered, as if it was the most logical thing in the entire freaking world. “And a scientist. To tell us what’s going on up there.”
I turned my gaze to Oliver Green—who was at least starting to look like his mind had started working again—and Simone Kingsley, who still looked absolutely horrified.
She locked eyes with me, and I knew immediately that if I was going to get back out of here and into the world above us in time to warn anyone, then she was the one I was going to have to count on. Because she looked just as angry and betrayed as I felt.
I'd let myself think for a minute that I had someone on my side in all this mess, when really, I'd just dug myself further into shit. Now, to figure out how to dig myself out.
Chapter 8
Once my uncle thought we’d all settled in, or whatever, he turned toward the office with all the equipment in it. Casting a grin over his shoulder, he rubbed his hands together like he was about to share his top-secret chocolate chip cookie recipe rather than whatever crazy conspiracy crock of shit this was.
“Wait until you see what I’ve put together,” he said. “Just wait until you see the bunker I’ve built.”
His gaze met mine, and he beamed even brighter. It seemed like he was under the impression I was no longer pissed off, but on board with this insanity.
“I guarantee you'll be impressed,” he promised. Then, he turned back to face the office again. “Come.”
Not seeing that we had any choice in the matter, we all followed after him. It took only a few steps for Simone to fall into line beside me, as I’d expected.
“You the niece?” she asked, her words coming out muffled as she tried to keep her volume down and her lips from moving.
“I am,” I answered quietly, somewhat confused. How in the hell did she know about me?
She gave me a barely-perceptible nod, then turned her eyes back toward my uncle, who was marching along like he didn’t have a care in the world.
“He told me about you. On the drive here, I mean. I was freaking the hell out, and he was trying to calm me down before he picked anyone else up. So, he told me about you. I guess he must have thought it would get me on board with all this or something. He told me you were some sort of computer genius and that you’d keep track of what was going on up top. That you were the one who warned him, gave him the chance to collect me to save my life.”
I almost snorted—but I stopped myself when I realized that Uncle Dearest probably wouldn’t take kindly to the idea of Simone and me cozying up and trading stories.
Then again, maybe he expected us to become best friends. He’d said he had enough supplies for us to stay down here for years. If we were going to be down here for that long—if he even thought we were going to be down here for that long—then it made sense for him to think we were going to become one big, happy family.
One he’d built all by himself.
The idea made my stomach turn. I’d walked out of one nightmare and right into another, and at that moment, I couldn’t decide which was actually worse: Being possibly pursued by the FBI and a death cult who meant to wipe out the entire population… or being kidnapped and trapped in a doomsday cult living underground, hiding from the world and its potential end.
“I wouldn’t exactly say I’m a genius,” I returned, trying to keep my voice as low as hers had been. “But I know my way around. I'm not sure what good that’s going to do for us down here, though.”
A moment later, I started to get an idea of what good it was going to do down here. Because we’d arrived inside the office—and it was chock-full of really high-level, really expensive computing equipment. I turned my gaze from one corner to the other, taking it all in, trying not to do the math and figure out how much it must have all cost.
Jeff had somehow brought together some of the best hardware I’d ever heard of, some so difficult to find that I’d thought impossible for anyone to get their hands on. And that was coming from me, who had access to the dark web. Me, who had run with the biggest and baddest hackers in the nation.
How the hell had he been able to afford all of this? And what exactly did he mean to do with it? I hadn’t seen the rest of the bunker, but I suspected that it was probably just as well-appointed as this room, and if he’d blown this much money on computer equipment alone…
Where the hell had he gotten it?
And that still left the bigger question: What did he mean to do with all this stuff? Why had he geared us up like we were going to try to run a government from this cave?
“You dig?” Jeff asked, closer to me than I'd realized and making me jump.
“Anyone ever told you it’s dangerous to sneak up on people who’re already freaked out and pissed off?” I hissed.
Then, I turned back to the room, unable to stop myself. My fingers were already itching to get into some of that equipment and see what it could do.
“What are you doing with all of this, Jeff? And more importantly, where the hell did you get the money for it? What exactly do you mean to do with it all?”
I’d been a fool, I realized a second later, to expect that he’d have a good answer for any of that. Or, if he did, that he’d give it to me. Because, evidently, his planning had reached a full stop at acquisition.
He gave me a dazed shrug, his eyes on the equipment in front of us.
“I bought the best of the best,” he said firmly. “I knew you’d need it. As to what we’re going to do with it…” Another shrug. “Well, that’s your forte, isn’t it, my little Einstein?”
He gave me a loving smile—one I totally would have fallen for when I was about seven years old and didn’t know any better—and then turned and darted toward the first hallway.
“Onwards!” he tossed back over his shoulder. “Let’s tour the living facilities!”
“At least he’s in a good mood, I suppose,” I muttered to Simone, who had come to a stop beside me.
“Good mood is an understatement,” she replied. “What—what is he so damn excited about?”
I stared at the room he’d left behind, my eyes roving over routers, cables, four desktop setups with two monitors each, several radios—both modern and ancient-looking—and even a small, twenty-inch TV.
He’d really gone out of his way to get everything he could possibly need. But for what?
“If this room is any indication, he’s been saving up and collecting for this for quite a while,” I told Simone. “He’s never said anything about it to me. But I suspect this is actually years of planning on his part coming to fruition.”
She turned to me, and her dark eyes narrowed into slits.
“You’re the one who told him about the attack. That it’s going to happen. That someone is planning it.”
She said it like it was an accusation and I tensed, waiting for a fight. But then her eyes opened again, and I could see the fear there. The question.
“Do you think it’s actually going to happen?”
Well, that was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it? If it did actually happen, it would mean I’d been right in my research. It would mean I’d been right to try to get the word out there.
It would also mean that millions of people would die before I could warn them. And I didn’t think I’d ever be able to get over that asp
ect.
It would mean that I’d be down here, safe, while all those people were dying. That I’d be breathing what I assumed to be clean air—does he have an air filter? I wondered suddenly—while they were inhaling poisonous gas. It would mean that I’d had the information to save them, and I’d failed.
It was all too much to fit into one answer, so I gave her the better, more concise version.
“I hope not. But I have no way of actually knowing the answer to that. And regardless of whether it happens or not, we’re stuck down here until we figure out how to get out again. Let’s go see what else he has to offer his guests.”
I turned and followed the rest of the group, knowing that she’d follow me, and also knowing that no matter what happened down here, she was the one who was going to have my back.
Right now, that was really all I needed. I wouldn’t be able to start on a plan until I knew exactly what I was working with—and as long as we were down here and safe, I knew what the first step was going to be.
I needed to get back onto the dark web and figure out whether that attack was actually happening or not. Because everything I did from here on out would depend on how safe the world above us actually was.
I didn’t have time for any research that day, though. First, we toured the living facilities. We each had our own room, roughly the size of a normal apartment bedroom, fitted out with a bed, desk, lamp, and small dresser. There were two bathrooms—one for the men, and one for the women, I assumed—each with a shower/tub combination.
So we wouldn’t be bunking up with anyone. That part was nice. But yeah, we’d be sharing bathrooms. The fairly generous size of the rooms, the amenities and furniture, and the fact that we had running water, though, confirmed my assumption that my uncle had been working on this for quite a while. And though he claimed to have built it himself, it seemed obvious that he’d had help.
Survival of The Fittest | Book 1 | The Fall Page 5