“Get out? How?” She looked ’round. “We’re in a building with walls three feet thick and steel doors without handles.”
“There must be some other way of-”
“Shit.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I think those alarms have got through to someone.”
It was hard to see where the figure came from. Maybe it had been sleeping in an armchair turned away from a camera, but suddenly it came lumbering into view.
“Christ almighty.” The figure-a man, I guess-had a huge mane of black curling hair; its face was painted white and the eyes had been lined with thick black kohl. The whole effect was of some Gothic Egyptian pharaoh who had suddenly quivered back to life. Its eyes were glazed but puzzled-looking, as if that someone had been woken from a deep sleep by an unfamiliar noise.
Michaela nodded at the screen. “If that’s Phoenix he’s going to know where we are soon enough.”
As the figure passed out of sight I said, “Try to get back to the camera in the main operations room. That’s where he’ll be headed.”
“What now?”
“We try to talk to him.”
“From the look of him I don’t think he’s going to be in a sweet mood.”
“We might be able to reason with him.”
“ Might is the key word. He looks pissed to me… got it.” She hit a key. Once more the image of the room that was a duplicate of this one flooded the screen. There were the banks of TV monitors, computers. A vast booster screen filled the end wall.
Michaela let out a breath of air. “Here he comes.”
We watched as the burly bear of a man with the Goth pharaoh face and tumbling black locks lumbered into the room. For a second he stood watching a dozen computer screens all flashing the same red disk. Michaela turned up the volume, and a repetitive pinging sound filled the room. The man ran his hands through his hair in a way that suggested what he was thinking right now was So what the hell’s happening?
He shook his head, no doubt trying to shift a drug-induced purple haze from his head. Then he froze.
“I think that’s the moment of realization,” Michaela murmured.
Suddenly the man turned to look up at where the camera must be fixed to the wall. That white face appeared as a vast skull floating there, with its kohled Egyptian eyes surrounded by a mane of Goth hair. The drowsy expression flashed to one of fury. Clenching his fist, he slammed it down onto a computer monitor. The man’s animal snarl rumbled from the speakers.
The next moment his fingers stabbed keys at one of the computers. That was when the screen behind him flashed into life. It showed Michaela and myself there in the center of the room.
When the man shouted I knew it was Phoenix. Only the softspoken burr had gone now; rage blasted the voice at us. “You were told not to enter rooms that were off limits! You have trespassed on restricted areas!” He glared up at the camera, his huge eyes blazing out at us from the booster screen. “You know what the penalty is for willful destruction of government property? This is a state of national emergency!”
“Phoenix-”
“If you do not return to your rooms immediately I will order in the guard. You will be shot, do you hear that? You will be executed by firing squad for-”
“Phoenix!” Michaela’s clear voice cut across his rant. “Phoenix. There is no guard. You’re alone in there, aren’t you?”
“The bunker personnel are asleep in their quarters. If you don’t leave that room immediately I will wake up the guards. Man, will they be pissed. They’re gonna bayonet you two in the guts. I tell you guys, you are fucking dead. Fucking dead, fucking buried, fucking history, fucking…” His voice rose to a scream.
“Phoenix!” I shouted. “There’s no one else in the bunker with you. You are alone. There are no marines, there are no engineers, no doctors.”
“How do you know that? Hey, how do YOU know!” He paused, suddenly looking edgy, as if a thought had occurred to him. A thought he didn’t like one little bit.
“Hey. Have you two hacked into the computer?”
“We found a code. We’ve been able to access the closed-circuit TV cameras at the other bunkers.”
“Shit!”
“We know that you’ve been feeding us old footage. We know that hornets have overrun the bunkers somehow.”
“Bastards… you interfering bastards…”
“Phoenix, we know that all the personnel in those bunkers are dead. That there is no government any more, or even any kind of emergency military command. It’s all been smashed.”
For a moment he paused, staring up at the camera. A look of horror distorted that weird-looking face. He seemed to be thinking through what I’d just told him.
“Admit it, Phoenix,” I said. “You’re alone in the bunker, aren’t you?”
He chewed his thick red lip, considering. Then: “OK, OK… I wanted to make things look good for you… hell, guys, I just wanted to be nice, OK? This is a shit world now. I just wanted… hell… it makes me feel good to see people enjoying themselves again.”
“What now?”
“Now?” He shrugged. “Stay longer if you want, guys. Enjoy the facilities. Eat as much food as you want. Hey, you can even walk around naked, I don’t mind.”
“I bet he doesn’t,” Michaela muttered under her breath.
“And what I said still goes. Bring your friends into the bunker. We can party, huh? Your tax dollars bought nice things here. You can forget all that crap outside those walls. In here it’s safe, you can relax-”
“Get high on stuff from the drug cupboard?”
He looked stung. “Hey, you’ve been across here? How did you get in?” He looked ’round, as if to see if anything had been disturbed.
I played it cagey. “We’ve seen enough, Phoenix.”
“What have you seen? Did you access the cameras?”
I shrugged, and saw my image shrug on the booster screen behind Phoenix.
“Phew…” He playacted a big OK-so-you’ve-found-me-out shrug. “So what’s your reaction?”
“We’re hardly going to sit here in judgment,” I said. “What you do across there is your own business.”
“Yeah, got to pass these long hours somehow, haven’t I?” He smiled now, relaxing. “So just leave those rooms alone. That’s my only condition. Then bring your people here and we can really…” He made a show of flicking his hair back with those white, spidery hands of his. “We can really let our hair down- right, guys?”
Michaela nudged me with her elbow. Then hissed so he wouldn’t hear. “It’s not the drugs he was worried about. He’s hiding something else.” Then, in a louder voice, she spoke to Phoenix. “Things must have been tough on your own.”
“Oh, I spent a lot of time alone as a kid.”
“Oh?”
“I stayed in my room and listened to music. Other kids always thought I looked weird…” He flicked back his hair again and jutted out his face so it filled the screen. “I can’t imagine why, can you?” He laughed at his own sense of humor. “I mean, what’s wrong with a guy wanting to look different from the rest of the herd?”
“Nothing, Phoenix.”
“You’ve heard that old Kinks song with the lyric that goes: ‘I’m not like everybody else.’ ”
“I’ve heard it, Phoenix. Neat song.”
“That’s my anthem… the soundtrack to my life, if you will.”
“Individuality is fine.” Michaela smiled, then talked to him in a friendly, chatty way. “What kind of party have you planned when we bring our friends here?”
“Hey, whatever you want. I’ve got some stuff in here that makes you feel as if you’re vacationing in the Milky Way. If you want to get horny I’ve got pills that get you as horny as a timber wolf in the rutting season. You get me?”
