Survival of The Fittest | Book 1 | The Fall

by Fawkes, K. M.

  Instead, he’d built an enormous hydroponic situation, each plant sitting in its own pod with its own constant source of water. Jeff had showed me the feeding system, where you injected minerals into the water that was going to be cycled through the plants, and then showed me the special light bulbs he’d put into the ceiling—bulbs that gave plants what they needed for photosynthesis.

  He’d claimed that we’d have better luck with a system like this because it made it easier for the plants to survive and thrive. That they had an easier time producing fruit when they were in a system like this.

  So, when I came abruptly to a corn stalk that had definitely not thrived in this system, I stared at it in shock for a minute before my brain started moving again.

  The whole thing was dead. And I mean dead. It looked like it was ready to be stuffed into a scarecrow, the leaves brown and dry, the main stalk starting to crumble in on itself. I began anxiously feeling around for corn, wondering if the thing had somehow managed to die without damaging whatever corn cobs it had been growing, but when I found one cob, and then another, they were mushy and wet and obviously rotting.

  I yanked my hand back and shot a glance to my side, wondering where Jeff was. No, this wasn’t my fault. I hadn’t killed the plant. It had obviously been dead for quite a while. But I didn’t think he was going to take that as an adequate answer.

  Not with his recent obsession over the amount of food we had available.

  My heart jumped when I couldn’t see him in the spot where I swore he’d been a moment earlier. I moved my eyes to the left and then the right, desperately searching for him. I didn’t have any idea what I was going to do when I found him, and if I’d been smart, I would have gotten right away from that plant. Away from the scene of the crime, so to speak.

  Instead, I stood there like an idiot, trying to find him, to make sure he didn’t see me with it.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised when he suddenly appeared right next to me, his eyes huge and furious. The universe seemed to always be doing that sort of thing to me.

  He looked from me to the plant, and then back again, while I tried to come up with something to say.

  “Look, I was picking the produce and I got here, and it already looked like that,” I said, keeping my tone reasonable. “Looks to me like it’s been—”

  “What did you do?” he screeched, dropping to his knees in front of the plant. He turned and glared up at me like I’d gone out of my way to kill the plant or something, just to hurt him.

  “Look,” I repeated. “I was walking down the row like you told me, gathering anything that was ripe, and I got here, and this plant was already dead.”

  “You killed it!” he howled. “How? Why?”

  Okay, now I was starting to get annoyed.

  “I didn’t kill it!” I shouted. “It’s been dead for some time, look at how dried out it is! How the hell do you think I would have done that in the space of thirty seconds?”

  He got to his feet, his expression turning cold and furious.

  “We had someone in here this morning, and they didn’t say anything about a dead plant,” he said quietly. “If this plant was dead at that point, they would have said something, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t see why they would have,” I retorted. “Everyone knows you’re freaking out about how much food we have. Why would they have gone out of their way to let you know that we’d lost a corn plant? Only someone with suicidal intentions would do something that stupid.” I leaned closer to him, hissing, “I don’t have suicidal intentions, Jeff. I’m not dumb enough to kill a plant when they’re so important to you.”

  He reared back and managed to look down his nose at me.

  “All I know, Michelle,” he said, “is that it was alive this morning. Now you’re here, and it’s dead. And that doesn’t look good for you, does it?”

  I watched him storm out of the garden, my heart sinking into my feet. I’d been hoping that it was just the pressure causing the fights between my uncle and the other team members, but it was becoming obvious that that wasn’t the case. He might have built this bunker to save us from survival in the over-ground, but I didn’t think that was uppermost in his mind, anymore. Or rather… his idea of us surviving the disaster didn’t necessarily mean all of us getting along together.

  It was looking more and more like ‘surviving the disaster’ meant doing everything he told us to do and keeping our mouths shut when he lost it.

  Even worse, I was afraid he was having some sort of mental breakdown. He was older, but he wasn’t ancient. But he was also dealing with the most extreme situation I thought mankind had ever gone through. He’d put himself in charge of what he had to think was the only remaining group of humanity on the face of the planet. He was bound to have some sort of emotional scarring, no matter how much he acted like it didn’t matter.

  Yeah, we were all going through the same thing. But he was definitely taking it to a whole new level.

  We were still six days away from the surface being safe, if you counted today. If Simone was right. Six days before there was even a chance of going back into the real world. Six days before it would be safe to get ‘kicked out’ of this place. That was an awfully long time to deal with a man who I thought was losing his mind.

  An awfully long time to continue to keep my mouth shut about it.

  I needed to find Simone and start building a backup plan in case I couldn’t manage it.

  I pulled Simone into the electronics room—my sanctuary—and slammed the door behind her, then shoved her into one of the chairs. Turning to the shelves at the front of the room, I reached for the radios and turned them all up to maximum volume.

  There was nothing to hear. I already knew there’d be nothing there. It was radio silence up there, and no matter how much I strained my ears, I couldn’t change that. I also didn’t know why I kept trying. Unless someone had managed to survive and somehow found their way into one of those radio stations and decided to use the mic to try to communicate with other people, I wasn’t going to hear anything at all.

  It didn’t make sense to keep trying. But my heart wouldn’t let me stop. I wanted desperately to believe that there were still people up there. That the attack had failed, that it hadn’t taken out the entire population. That we would go up there and find that maybe a few people had died, but that society as we knew it still existed.

  And right now, it was going to serve another purpose. Because there weren’t any human voices coming through, but there was a lot of static. And that gray noise was all I needed to disguise the sound of me having a hurried conversation with Simone.

  “My uncle’s losing it,” I hissed. “Going completely crazy. He just blamed me for a plant that’s been dead for what looks like weeks, or at least days. He’s off his rocker, and I don’t think it’s going to get any better.”

  “I’ve noticed,” she said dryly. “But I’m no doctor.”

  I flicked my fingers at her, annoyed. “And the doctor we do have, as far as I can tell, is on Jeff’s side. I don’t think he’ll be very open to hearing my guesses about my uncle’s mental well-being. He'll probably tell me I’m not qualified.”

  She snorted and gave me a nod. “You aren’t qualified, Michelle. In case you’d forgotten.”

  My shoulders sagged. She was right. But that didn’t take the whole story into account.

  “I’m also his only family,” I reminded her. “And I’ve known him longer than anyone else here. I knew him when he was normal. And I’m telling you, something’s wrong. Something’s going sideways in his head.”

  There was a deep silence from Simone, and when I looked up at her, she was giving me a look that was equal parts frustration and sorrow.

  “What do you want to do about it?” she finally asked.

  “We have six days until we can get out of here safely, right? If you’re correct about the VXM?” At her nod, I continued. “Then we have six days to convince the others that we hav
e to get out of here. Jeff is sick, and he needs help. I want to get him back to the surface, and to some kind of help, as soon as we can. Whatever it takes.”

  “And if the others disagree?” she asked. “If your uncle disagrees?”

  I bit my lip, trying to think through that version. In the end, I knew, it wouldn’t change anything.

  “I want to get out of here. And I want to get my uncle to a hospital or something. Maybe that attack only hit a small slice of the population—and maybe there’s another attack coming. I want to get back to the surface and see whether I can help. Whatever it takes.”

  Simone bit her lip as well, then placed her hand over mine. “Whatever it takes,” she agreed.

  Chapter 13

  That night at dinner, I decided to take my chances with convincing the others that we had to get the hell out of that bunker as soon as we thought it would be safe.

  “Simone has more knowledge about chemical weapons than the rest of us combined—times a hundred,” I told the men. “There’s a reason Jeff chose her for our little group. I’m sure he did his research. I’m sure he got the best he could find.”

  Yeah, I was flattering him. Definitely going out of my way to please him. But I needed allies at the moment. I needed the rest of them to agree with me—and there was a lot better chance of that happening if my uncle was on my side.

  Jeff gave me a quick nod in agreement to my point. Not that I was surprised. He might be slowly slipping into the depths of mental illness or going crazy just from the responsibility he’d taken on, but he must have been completely—well, mostly—lucid when he made the plans for this place. That would definitely have included finding the people that he thought gave him the best chance of surviving.

  “She’s also half my age,” Oliver said with a snort. “As are you. If you think any of us is going to risk our lives based on your opinion—or hers—I’m afraid you have another thing coming.”

  “You’d rather risk your life by staying down here?” I asked, my voice rising with the anger I felt. “You’d rather stay down here, with dwindling supplies, and take your chances? If one plant in the garden died, the others can die as well. Hell, maybe all of them will die, and what will you do then? What happens if it all goes wrong down here and you’re trapped?”

  “I think the chances of that are minimal,” he said coldly. “As you said, your uncle planned carefully for this.”

  Well, shit. There went my plan of pleasing Jeff.

  “I’m positive that he did. But not even he could plan for all emergencies. Random deaths in the garden. Leaks in the water tanks. There are a number of things, Oliver, that could go wrong down here. Things that not even you can control. You’re a doctor. Surely you can see the opportunity for things to go wrong.”

  “And you think going up there, taking the chance of dying a horrible death like all those people did, is preferable?” Bob asked, breaking into the conversation with a sneer.

  I turned to him and narrowed my eyes. I hadn’t liked the man since he joined us. He was the sort of person who made stupid comments and congratulated himself for his mental acuity. The sort of man who probably whistled at women crossing the street. Probably drove a truck so big he couldn’t see over the hood and hit small animals with it—then laughed.

  “I think it’s worth a chance,” I said coldly. “Simone knows the material they used, or at least knows how material like that reacts to the outside atmosphere. She knows how long it will be active. And when it will stop killing. Five more days. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather try my luck back out in the real world than die down here, trapped in a bunker where the people have run out of food and water. I don’t want to be buried alive, Bob. I’m too young for that.”

  He glared at me and I could practically see the wheels turning in his head as he tried to come up with an answer to that. I started talking again before he could come up with anything.

  “I want to make sure everyone down here lives through this, just as much as you do. And people are starting to…” I slid my gaze sideways toward my uncle, taking in the pale color of his skin and the fine sheen of sweat on his brow. “Get sick,” I finished, deciding I didn’t need to be any more specific than that. “I care about people down here, and if they start to get sick, I want them to have real medical care. A real chance at getting better.”

  My eyes went to Oliver, my brain already coming up with answers to his inevitable argument with that last point. After all, he was the doctor down here. He was bound to have opinions about me wanting access to a hospital.

  So, it surprised me when it was my uncle who answered.

  “I’m sorry to hear you have such little faith in me,” he said gently. “I would have thought you would know better, Michelle. You know how careful I’ve always been with my planning. How far in advance I’ve thought. Do you really think I could have built all of this, stocked it all, without taking such things into account?”

  He gestured around us at the bunker, his piece de resistance. His ultimate rebellion against the world above.

  I reached out and took his hand. “Jeff, you’re sick. I need to get you to a hospital, to get you help. And I’m not going to let anyone stand in my way. Not even you.”

  Then, his eyes changed again, and the man I recognized as my uncle disappeared completely, leaving the man who’d been giving us orders. The man who’d shouted at me in the garden.

  “You’re excused from the table, Michelle,” he said coldly. “I don’t appreciate this sort of talk. If you’re going to insist on spreading drama like this, I think we’ll all do better with you in your room.”

  I stared at him in surprise for a moment, wondering if he was joking, but he still hadn’t said anything after thirty seconds, and I realized that as ludicrous as it was, he was being completely serious. My glance went to Simone, and I could practically hear what she would have told me: Get up and leave, Michelle. Live to fight another day.

  No, this wasn’t a life-or-death situation. Not yet. But I also had to pick and choose my battles. And I’d lost this one.

  I needed to wait for another opening.

  So, I got up, fuming, and stalked out of the dining room, my brain already moving through the next few days, looking for other opportunities for convincing my uncle to let us go.

  As it turned out, my next opportunity came the very next morning. I had, for some reason, been assigned to gardening duty again—surprising, when my uncle was so convinced that I’d gone out of my way to kill one of the plants—and Uncle Jeff was in the garden with me once more, presumably to keep an eye on me and make sure I didn’t do any further damage.

  It could have been an absolute nightmare. Instead, I chose to see it as an opportunity. This was my uncle we were talking about. Yeah, I wanted to get back to the surface to see what was going on up there—to see if I could help. But I also wanted to get him up there. We were talking about the man who’d had a hand in raising me when my parents were no longer in the picture. The man who’d taught me how to tell an earthworm from a tomato worm.

  The man who had lost me to the system, but had kept in touch with me, writing a letter a week until I’d gone into Juvie and the FBI had cut him off.

  I wasn’t willing to let him die down here. Even if that made me the bad guy for the moment.

  “So, how are you feeling down here in all this recycled air?” I asked casually as I injected fertilizer into the watering system, being extremely careful to inject only as much as the plants needed.

  The last thing I wanted was to be responsible for the entire lot dying.

  My uncle, who was in charge of gathering the ripe fruits and vegetables today, shrugged, his red flannel shirt moving with his shoulders.

  “No different than I would up above, if I’m being honest,” he said. “After all, what’s the world except a bunker? We’re all breathing recycled air up there, too, you know.”

  Well. I’d never thought of it that way, and honestly the idea of it real
ly creeped me out, so I tried really hard not to start thinking of it that way. There was fresh air up top. That was my story, and I was sticking to it.

  Besides, his answer totally missed my point.

  “Even more recycled down here, though, considering there’s only a set amount of it,” I said. “In fact, that makes me wonder… How are you bringing fresh air down here? Won’t the air we have run out of the good stuff?”

  He gave me a look over his glasses, his face showing me exactly what he thought of that line.

  “Michelle, surely you know enough about plants to realize that they do more than give us food.”

  Oh. Right.

  I shrugged and gave him a crooked grin. “Tech-head,” I admitted. “Besides, you have to remember that I was never that great in the garden, even when I was a kid. I always had to ask you which plants to pull up and which ones to water.”

  He chuckled. “I had forgotten about that. If I’d left you to your own devices, you would have pulled up all my tomato plants.”

  “Hey, they look like weeds!” I protested. “Until they’re tied up to the sticks, they don’t look like anything special!”

  “You used to say the same thing when you were little,” he said with an affectionate grin. “But that never stopped you from eating those tomatoes.”

  “They’re my favorite,” I murmured. “Especially the big purple ones you used to grow.”

  At that, he stopped what he was doing entirely and let out a happy sigh. “Heirloom tomatoes,” he breathed. “God, those tasted good, didn’t they? Grown in fresh soil, plenty of fertilizer, with mulch over it to keep them warm at night…”

  “Can’t get that down here,” I observed, letting my meaning shine through.

  “No,” he replied slowly. “I miss it, too. The smell of wet earth with the sun beating down on it. The feel of soil between my fingers.”