Survival of The Fittest | Book 1 | The Fall

by Fawkes, K. M.

  I didn’t think that chance would ever exist again.

  “This is our home, now,” he snarled. “And I suggest you get used to that.”

  He dropped back into his seat, his chest heaving with emotion or effort—or an oncoming heart attack. I couldn't exactly tell.

  “Now, I won’t condone you two going around me again. I don’t like scheming, and I won’t allow you two to plot against me. You’re not allowed out of the bunker, and that’s all there is to it. I suggest you throw that idea right out of your minds. And as I no longer trust you two together, I’ll have to insist that whenever you leave your rooms, you have Oliver, Bob, or myself with you. You are not to be alone together. I’m restricting your activities and you will no longer be allowed in the electronics room. Housekeeping and cooking only for the two of you, for the foreseeable future.”

  Terrific. So he’d basically recreated 1950s society. Because that was exactly what we needed down here. It would definitely fix everything.

  He relaxed back into his chair like a king who had just passed down a set of orders, while the rest of us stared at him. It was ludicrous. But I couldn’t get my voice to work to tell him so.

  “Jeff, don’t you think it will affect our ability to run the bunker if these girls aren’t allowed to help?” Oliver finally asked in a halting, hesitant voice. “Michelle is a computer expert. Don’t you think it’s a waste if we don’t use her for communications?”

  Good for him. Logical questioning. Good.

  But my uncle slammed his closed fists down on the table again.

  “Quiet!” he roared. “I’ve given my orders, and I won’t have anyone questioning them. Not even you, Oliver. You and Bob will keep an eye on these girls and make sure they don’t do anything stupid. Or at least, stupider than what they’ve already done to betray my trust.”

  He leveled a fuming look on me, and then one on Simone, and all I could think was that this was the stupidest situation possible. He thought he was the dictator down here, and that we were all just going to do exactly what he told us to do. He thought I’d actually keep my mouth shut about it, that I’d actually go along with it.

  Well, he hadn’t known me in a long time. He might have thought I was still that seven-year-old who was too amazed at how he talked to question anything he said or did. That kid who had been so star-struck with his confident, booming voice that she’d never talked back to him.

  But that wasn’t who I was anymore. I had a world to get back to, and I wasn’t going to let him stop me. The best part was, he no doubt thought he had me beaten into submission. Which meant that he’d never see my escape coming.

  Chapter 16

  That night, I stood statue-still behind my door, listening to the hallway outside after the lights went out. Simone and I had managed to have a whispered conversation directly after breakfast—right outside the dining room—before we were officially sent our separate ways with our guard dogs. The day had been just as inefficient and miserable as I’d thought it would be, though at least Simone and I had been able to see each other intermittently. After all, there were only so many rooms to clean, and as long as that was all we were allowed to do, it had meant we were bound to cross paths occasionally.

  Which had given us the ideal opportunity for scattered, three-sentences-at-a-time planning for what we were going to do tonight.

  I crouched down in the darkness of my room and put my hand to the door, pressing my ear against the surface in an attempt to hear what was going on outside. We’d been in here for several nights, and at this point, I already knew the drill. Lights went out at nine, regardless of whether you were ready to go to sleep or not. At that point, unless you’d somehow managed to get a flashlight into your room, you were going to sleep. There weren’t any windows in this enclosure, so there was no moonlight.

  Once the lights went out, we were in utter darkness until they came back on in the morning.

  The lights had been out for about five minutes now, and that darkness surrounded me, nearly complete in its hold on the world. I slid a hand to my right, along the ground, searching blindly.

  Ah, there it was. I’d managed to sneak one of the flashlights out of the emergency supplies earlier, when I was in there cleaning and Bob had decided that reading a book was more important than actually supervising me. It was a tiny thing—one of those flashlights that you’re supposed to carry around in the glove compartment of your car. Probably wouldn’t even illuminate an entire hallway, so there would be plenty of shadow left for people hiding around corners and looking for us.

  But it was small, which meant it had been easy to hide under the reading chair I’d dragged in here. When Oliver—and then Jeff—had come in to make sure I was ready for bed and that I wasn’t doing any secret plotting, I’d been able to slip it under the low chair and trust that they wouldn’t look under there and see it.

  Which was good. Because if Simone and I were going to succeed tonight, we needed that light. Needed to be able to see what we were dealing with, so we could start planning how to get around it.

  I snapped my attention back to the hallway outside and listened again. If anything had happened out there in the last thirty seconds or so, I would have missed it, because I was too busy celebrating my flashlight acquisition.

  Stupid, Michelle! I knew how to pay attention and focus when it was important. When lives were literally on the line. What was I doing, allowing myself to get so distracted?

  Of course, I already knew the answer to that. Simone and I hadn’t been allowed any further food during the day, and I was starving. The lack of calories was also starting to affect to my ability to function. My brain had been lagging for the last couple of hours.

  I just hoped my body would hold it together while I escaped this prison.

  When five more minutes had passed without any sound from the hallway outside, I finally cracked my door and put my eye to the opening, carefully scanning the darkness outside for any sort of movement. Not that I would have seen it, because, you know, darkness. But I was counting on my sixth sense to let me know if anyone was out there, and when I threw that sense out into the darkness of the hall and held my breath… it told me that the hallway was empty.

  Time to go, then.

  I got to my feet as quickly as I could without making too much noise and eased through the door, pulling it almost all the way shut behind me. If someone came down this hallway with a flashlight, I didn’t want them to be able to immediately see that my room was open—and potentially empty. I didn’t want anyone even thinking about searching for me until…

  Well, at all. With luck, they’d never even know I’d been out of my room.

  I slid down the wall, my back against the hardness of it, my bare feet skimming along the floor, until my hands found the space that said I’d come to the next door down. Simone’ room. We’d intentionally chosen rooms right next to each other on that first day, both of us somehow knowing—without ever discussing it—that, at some point, we would need to be close to each other.

  The fact that we’d known that so quickly still amazed me. Thank God for women’s intuition. Maybe that was why men didn’t trust us. They thought we were all witches.

  I scratched one nail slowly down the surface of the door, then stepped to the side to get out of the way.

  A breath of air against my face told me that the door had swung open, and seconds later I could feel that there was someone else in the hallway with me. I reached out blindly, feeling for her, and finally found Simone’s arm, then slid my hand down and took hers.

  We couldn’t afford to turn the light on yet. And I didn’t want to lose her in the dark.

  Turning, I started toward the end of the hallway, where it led into one of the common areas. I slid the flashlight into my pocket, kept my free hand that wasn't holding Simone's on the wall to guide me, and started counting my steps. The last thing I’d done before I got into my room was to count steps, on a certain path. Steps from Simone’ room t
o the main area. Steps from there into the kitchen, and then the pantry.

  Steps from there into the entryway, where we’d find the stairs that led up to the door that would take us back into the outside world.

  Fifteen slow, silent steps and we were in the common area. I felt the walls fall away and the increased air movement that meant we were in a larger space. I stopped the moment my hand met the corner of the hall and turned left to follow it. Three steps and there was another door. The kitchen. I turned in, ready to take a quick side trip, and tugged Simone with me.

  When my math told me we were actually in the pantry, I turned, found the door, and closed it. Then, I turned on the flashlight.

  “Are you insane?” Simone hissed, holding a hand up to shelter her eyes from the sudden light.

  I was already scanning the shelves, though, looking for easily portable food.

  “Always. But more importantly, I’m hungry,” I answered. “You haven’t eaten either; aren’t you starving?”

  “Oh. Right.” And she started scanning the shelves with me, her fingers running lightly over the offerings.

  Granted, most of it was no good to us. For a bunker that was supposed to be able to keep us alive for months or even years, the food here sure did require a lot of cooking. We were alarmingly short on things that didn’t take either power or time—which to me seemed like a terrible oversight.

  Still, I guessed when your entire bunker had been planned and then stocked by a madman…

  I found a box of crackers and quickly ripped it open, taking out one long, cylindrical sleeve for Simone and another for me. I turned around to see that she’d already grabbed two bottles of water. I tossed her a sleeve of crackers, gave her a grin, and then hit the light again.

  Darkness fell in a curtain over us and I took a second to give my eyes a chance to adjust. Not that I was going to be able to see a damn thing in this situation, but to get rid of the afterglow of having recently been in the light. When the red halo died down, I moved forward, put my hand to the wall, and started counting again.

  Minutes later, we were in what I knew to be that weird foyer area of the bunker, surrounded by the shelves and refrigerator/freezer/oven thing that Jeff seemed to have included in this room as a backup to the ones he had in the kitchen.

  I couldn’t figure out why that had been important enough to back up… but things like additional clothes had been beyond him. But, again, this was a plan a crazy person had put together.

  I took a deep breath and closed the door to the main part of the bunker behind us, counting on this door to be as silent as all the others were. To my relief, it was, and the thing slid into the frame and sealed with barely a whisper, giving us absolute privacy.

  I flipped the switch on the flashlight and turned it immediately toward the stairs, and Simone and I rushed forward.

  Now that we were here, we could stop being so quiet and careful and focus on the things that required our focus: Speed and research. We’d been lucky to get through so much of the bunker without being discovered. I didn’t want to take the chance of staying out for much longer.

  I darted up the steps to the door, came to a skidding halt with Simone right behind me, and turned the flashlight’s beam on the door. It was just as I’d remembered: Smooth, unmarred silver metal, with no doorknob. Nothing but that weird scanner pad—and the hole underneath it.

  “That scanner’s going to be useless to us,” I whispered. “Unless we somehow find a way to steal my uncle’s fingerprint. Because I’m positive that his is the only one the door will respond to. So, the scanner’s no good to us. But if that hole is made for a key…”

  “And we can get the key,” she continued, “Then it might be our key out of here. So to speak.”

  “So now we just have to figure out who has the key—and where they store it,” I finished, talking half to myself and half to her.

  That part was probably pretty easy. My uncle wouldn’t give anyone else the key; he would have kept it for himself. And I was willing to bet that he also didn’t leave it lying around, waiting to be stolen.

  Which meant he probably had it on him.

  If that was true, then our escape was going to be even more difficult than I’d anticipated. But I’d always thrived on challenges. And as far as I could see, this door and its keyhole meant that there was a way out. We just had to figure out how to take advantage of it.

  Chapter 17

  The next day, Simone and I started our housekeeping chores with one mission: Find that key and steal it. I thought we had a pretty good chance of getting it done, since—despite the lack of efficiency or necessity—she and I had been assigned to clean all the rooms again. Despite the fact that we’d cleaned them the day before. And despite the fact that we would be wasting our time and towing Oliver and Bob along with us as we did so.

  It was the stupidest possible way to take care of the bunker. I mean, I wasn’t sold on anything down here being actually important—other than staying alive—but I knew for a fact that things were being ignored just so Jeff could keep Simone and me ‘prisoner’ this way.

  Whatever. That wasn’t my problem. With any luck at all, after tonight, none of this would be my problem anymore. At least, that was what I was hoping.

  And all of that aside, cleaning all the same rooms again meant that we had access to pretty much the whole place—with minimal supervision, since Oliver and Bob were less than interested in watching us do housework.

  Of course, they weren’t our only obstacles. Jeff was becoming increasingly unstable, and after I ducked into my room, which I’d chosen to clean first, I could see him walking by occasionally, his hands folded behind his lower back like he was some sort of soldier, looking carefully into each room as he passed them by. It was obvious that he’d decided he needed to keep an eye on the situation—and that he was doing so personally.

  More work in the bunker not getting done. What an utter lack of efficiency.

  “What’s his problem?” I asked Bob after the third Jeff sighting in the hallway. “Doesn’t he have better things to do?”

  Bob grunted out a little laugh that made me want to break his nose. “Keeping an eye on you girls,” he said bluntly. “Doesn’t want you getting into any more trouble, and I can’t say I blame him, really. You two have made quite an enemy of him. Can’t say I would have—”

  “He going to keep doing that all day?” I interrupted, not interested in what Bob would or wouldn’t have done had he been in my shoes—where he would never be.

  “And all night, too,” he said, nodding sagely. “Says he’s not going to sleep as long as you two are plotting against him. So you’ll see him wandering the halls at night as well, if you’re out. If you’re looking for trouble, he’s going to be there to give it to you.”

  He gave me a gap-toothed grin, and I renewed my wish to break his nose.

  Maybe I’d have a chance to do just that on my way out of here.

  I forced my hands back to scrubbing the floor and ordered my brain to get started on this new problem with Jeff. Roaming the halls, eh? Well, to start with, that was going to make it awfully difficult to find the key if he was actually keeping it on him. We might have access to the rooms, but if he had it in his pocket and never bothered to stop pacing—or go helpfully to sleep—I didn’t see how we were going to get it.

  Still. That wasn’t a new problem. We had a hope that we’d find it in one of the rooms, but I had to admit I hadn’t really put that much stock in the idea. I just didn’t think he was going to let it out of his sight. Not when it meant keeping us all down here in his little circus.

  So, I put that thought to the side. The problem wasn’t anything new. It just meant that if we had to steal it from him personally, we now had a moving target rather than a stationary one.

  Next problem: Jeff himself. If he was wandering the halls, keeping an eye on us, it was going to make it a whole lot more difficult for us to go through the drawers and cabinets we’d need to g
o through to look for that key. It was also going to make it astronomically more difficult to get out tonight and get to the—

  Oh. Oh. Suddenly, everything snapped into place and a problem I’d been dealing with up to this point—how we were going to handle things if we couldn’t find the key at all, and had to deal with the actual scanner instead—became clear.

  I hadn’t touched the problem yet because I knew damn well that there was no answer. There was no way we’d get past that scanner without my uncle’s fingerprint, and no matter what the movies said, there was no way to lift that fingerprint off a glass or anything else and use it. Still, this had been a problem I hadn’t been looking at too closely. I’d been counting on somehow getting the key. But now, my mind went in an entirely different direction.

  What if we didn’t need the key, and didn’t need a fake fingerprint, but had the real live hand instead?

  “What are you saying?” Simone asked quietly, keeping her head down so her voice didn’t carry.

  We were both in Jeff’s room, dusting the furniture, one of those times when we ended up in the same room at the same time due to Oliver and Bob being rather lazy about how they organized our movements.

  Luckily, they were both also lazy about supervising us when we were together. And it gave us a chance to talk.

  “I’m saying that there’s a good chance my uncle is actually out in the hallways tonight when we leave,” I said, positioning my face right next to her ear so I could keep my voice quiet. “And if he’s in the hallway…”

  “Then he might catch us,” she said, frowning.

  “Or,” I noted, giving her my best version of please-pick-up-on-what-I’m-saying eyes, “he might follow us. And if he does, and happens to get a knock on the head once we’re in a specific location…”