The sound that came out like a hiccup from her lips was a cross between a sob and a laugh. “Idiot, Greg. Babies? If I thought you could spirit us away to a tropical island I might take you up on it.”
Then she did start to sob. She put her arms ’round my neck and drew herself in tight against me. The sobs shuddered through her thin shoulders. I felt her tears wet my throat. It was like a dam had given way, releasing months of pent-up grief in a tidal wave of weeping that paralyzed her. I felt her body sag against mine as the convulsions of emotion ran through it. I stroked her hair and whispered over and over that I’d do every-thing I could to make it right for her. That I wouldn’t let her come to any harm. Just when I thought she’d never stop weeping, she did stop. That iron will of hers that had carried her through the madness and murder reasserted itself. She caught the sobs in mid-flow and stopped it just like you or I would switch off a TV.
“I’m sorry, Greg. I shouldn’t have let myself go like that.”
“You had every reason to. You can’t carry that kind of grief; it’ll eat into you like-”
“No. I’m OK now.” She loosened herself from my arms to turn back to the keyboard.
“Michaela, leave it now. We’ve seen everything we need to.”
She spoke crisply. “No, we haven’t. There’s one bunker installation we haven’t looked inside.” The cursor sped down the screen. “This one.”
Thirty-nine
Surviving isn’t just avoiding being swamped by events. It’s about avoiding being swamped by your own emotions to the extent that you can’t function. I watched Michaela snap her runaway emotions into line and return to work at the computer keyboard as if nothing had happened.
“Let’s see what’s really happening in the main bunker.”
“How do you know which one it is out of all those?” I nodded at the bunker directory that listed three hundred facilities like the one we now stood in, either as guests or as prisoners.
“Easy. The bunker reference is printed on everything. It’s even stenciled on the chairs, in case any go missing at stock taking.”
“Thank God for government bureaucracy.”
She tapped in the code, her fingers blurring with speed. “I’m in.”
“Stick to the interior cameras.”
“Here goes.” She picked one at random from the computer screen. Immediately the big booster screen showed the image of a gloomy concrete corridor that could have been anywhere.
“Next,” she said, hitting a key.
“Ah, the torture chamber,” I said as the screen showed the room where we underwent decontamination.
“And just as we thought. Phoenix watched us as we stood there in the dark.”
“Then got his perverse cookies seeing us undress and getting sprayed with disinfectant. I’m really starting to have my doubts about that guy.”
“Me, too.” She accessed the next camera. It showed the kitchen where we’d cooked popcorn. One of the faucets dripped into the sink.
“Can you up the sound?”
“I’ll try… yes. Oh… there’s a volume control, too.” She pointed to a slider switch that popped up on screen.
“Turn it up full.” I watched the dripping faucet in the kitchen as a glistening pearl of water fell into the sink. Using the cursor, Michaela increased the volume. Instantly the drip of water on stainless steel filled the room. It sounded like ball bearings dropping into a metal pail. “So old Phoenix boy could watch and listen to us whenever he wanted. It makes you wonder if he even watched us taking a shower.”
“I guess that’s the least of our problems now. Take a look at that.”
Michaela had accessed another camera. This showed a room that was a duplicate of this one. “That must be the command center across in the main bunker. See the red lights flashing on the screen?”
“An alarm?”
“I guess so.” She shook her head. “The bunker computer’s trying to tell people across there that someone’s trespassing in their backup center in the annex.”
“But where is everyone?”
“I’ll keep trying the cameras… Wait… that looks like their kitchen. Jeez, what a mess.”
The kitchen in the main bunker, just fifty yards or so away from the annex we now stood in, shared the same layout as ours, only it was around twice the size. Used microwave cartons had been carelessly stacked on worktops, chili sauce and dried rice smeared the plastic containers. Around twenty dirty cups littered the table.
Michaela wrinkled her nose. “Ugh. They’re not house proud across there, are they?”
“Maybe you don’t notice after you’ve been sealed away here for months… but wait… can you zoom into the table… those things in the middle? I thought they were plastic spoons. Can you make out what they are?”
“Wait a minute. I have to go back to the main camera menu. Ah, got it. I’ll enlarge the image a hundred percent. Wow.”
I looked at what littered the table. “Those people aren’t relying on caffeine for a high. How many hypodermics do you see?”
“Hell, around a dozen or so. You can even see blood on the needles. I hope those guys haven’t been falling into bad habits and started sharing.”
“So, it has sent them kooky in there. They must have raided the sick bay for the happy potions. Check out all those empty Demerol cartons.”
“Well, I haven’t seen anyone yet.”
“They’re probably sleeping off their narcotics party.”
“And that might explain why no one across there has picked up the intruder alarm.”
“Vigilant bunch, aren’t they?”
Michaela ran through shots from the closed-circuit cameras. Image after image burst on the booster screen. I saw storerooms, bathrooms, corridors, a sickbay (with some naked-looking drug cabinets).
“Say cheese.” Michaela nodded up at the big screen.
There were the two of us, looking at images of ourselves on screen. The next image revealed the recreation room Phoenix had shown us soon after we arrived. Then there had been people playing pool or sitting reading or watching TV. I expected to see at least a couple of dope heads sleeping on couches.
“Hell… they’ve let the place go in the last twentyfour hours.” I looked up at the screen that showed the big room in a generally crappy state. Spent microwave cartons all over the floor. Empty wine bottles strewn across the pool table. There were more hypodermics, along with empty phials on the coffee table. It looked as if someone had thrown a handful of shit at the walls, then smeared it into big looping circles.
I shook my head. “Phoenix has been fooling us again. That place never got into such a state over the last few hours.”
“He must have showed us archive shots from months ago.”
“So what’s his game? Why is he deluding us?”
“Maybe there is no reason. Other than what’s in those phials he’s been injecting into his veins.”
“You mean he’s delusional?”
“Maybe even downright insane.” She shook her head. “Greg, I’m starting to get the feeling that there is no specialized bunker team here.”
“So the guy’s here alone.”
“And probably has been for months. No wonder he has to sweeten his life with all those chemicals. He probably hasn’t talked to another human being since society took a flip. Come to that, he probably hasn’t seen daylight since last year.”
“Jesus.” I felt a prickle of unease. “I think our priority should be to get out of here. If he’s one sick kiddo then he might try playing some of his pervert tricks on us.”
