Stranger

Thirty-four

Maybe I should have been asking questions about our immediate future in that place, but to step through the red door was to step into a different world.

Whereas the first two rooms we’d passed through had been utilitarian and colder than a zombie’s good-night kiss, this suite of rooms was warm, comfortable, even luxurious. Like a pair of vacationers in a new hotel room we explored. On the first level was a kitchen painted in warm oranges with a modern stove, refrigerator, sink and countertops in stainless steel. Bolted to one wall were a whole bank of microwave ovens.

“Looking at these”-Michaela opened a microwave door-“you can guess what will be on the menu.”

She guessed right. A walk-in pantry had been stacked floor-to-ceiling with every microwave-ready meal you could think of. While the refrigerator had been packed with what I first thought were racks of toothpaste. Only a closer look revealed that these were labeled NASA PATENT PENDING. I saw they were marked either cheese, mayonnaise, cream or butter. “Butter from a tube?”

“Good God.” Michaela’s eyes widened in sheer wonder. “They have butter? I’ve forgotten what butter tastes like.”

I picked up more tubes. “But which one of these contains the bread?”

“Idiot.” She smiled. And it was such a breathtakingly beautiful smile that I found myself grinning back at her. She broke away to open a cupboard full of knobby vacuum packs. “There’s the bread.” Taking out the tennis ball-sized lump, she read the label. “ ‘Remove all packaging. Place on oven tray and bake for twenty minutes’… partly baked bread. We’re certainly not going to starve here. I wonder if they’ve got any coffee.”

“It’s in the drum by the kettle.”

She turned on the faucets. “Hot and cold. It looks pure.”

“It’ll be pumped from a sealed well, I guess.” I looked up at the lights. “They must have a good set of generators, too, and a heck of a lot of fuel. They’re not worried about rationing.”

Stroking a clean countertop, she gave a sigh of pleasure. “We might as well enjoy it while it lasts. It’s un-likely the government’ll keep us here as guests for long.”

“I guess not.”

A living room came next, with comfortable sofas, deep armchairs, fluffy rugs, a wall-mounted TV screen that was bigger than your bedroom door. Again the place was pleasantly warm and decorated in luscious orange with a pale yellow ceiling. “Some nuke shelter,” I said, running my hand over a lush velvet drape beside a false window that showed a painted view of a stag drinking from a stream.

“I read somewhere that these bunkers were all decorated in bright colors and furnished like this after psychologists said that people who spent long periods of time in them would go crazy or start killing themselves.”

“You’re hardly likely to suffer cabin fever here,” I said. “Look at those potted plants. They’re real. They’ve even got their own automatic watering system.”

“If you’re going to keep people in a concrete box for months you’ve got to look after their creature com-forts.” She picked up a remote from a coffee table. When she pressed a button soft music padded into the room from concealed speakers. “Ambient music.”

“No doubt chosen by psychologists, too. There are probably subliminal messages of hope and optimism buried down in the mix.”

“Don’t knock it, Greg. I think we’ve just stumbled into heaven on earth.”

“Let’s hope so.”

She smiled. “Cynic. Come on, let’s explore.”

Carpeted stairs led down below ground level to a hallway, again painted bright yellow, with a frieze of dolphins and palms. One door led to a corridor lined with yet more doors. These were the bedrooms (although they resembled ship’s cabins). These were a little plainer but had comfortable beds, closet space, tables, mirrors, washbasins: the usual stuff. There were also a couple of bathrooms, too, for shared use.

Back at the other side of the stairs, a wide door opened up into a plain white painted corridor. There weren’t as many doors-and these were all hard steel-and locked. Beside each door was a keypad where the bunker people would tap in their open sesame code. The doors bore stenciled notices that said things like Back-up Ops or Sick Bay or Service Center or Q.A. Board room. In the middle of one wall were a set of large twin doors (but no keypad, I noted). Those doors were labeled Comm-Route, whatever that was.

“That looks to be the extent of it,” she said. “Come on, let’s make the most of paradise.”

The Voice didn’t visit until that evening around ten hours later. I say evening because I only had my watch to go on. Of course, there were no windows in what was, when all’s said and done, a grande deluxe bomb shelter. Part novelty and part hunger, we both ate half a dozen microwave meals apiece. Mexican, Chinese, Italian, French cuisine. They tasted wonderful considering they came out of vacuum packs. And when we’d baked the fresh bread (again from a little bag) it smelled so mouthwatering we tore off lumps and squirted NASA butter all over it in a gooey, golden stream.

After pigging out, I checked the TV in the living room area. Three of the channels showed the equiva-lent of ambient music. Channel One carried a single view of the ocean washing over rocks. Two showed a view of trees in the fall; flocks of birds came and went but not much else. Three played a static shot of a farm with cows grazing in green pastures. More psychologist-inspired programming, I guessed. Other channels were more promising. A comedy channel showing old TV sitcoms. Music channels for every possible taste. Sports, replaying classic football games. The last channel appeared devoted to lightweight action movies.

By midnight I slouched low in an armchair watching an old cop movie. By that time I was too drowsy to follow the plot. While sitting with her bare feet up on the sofa, Michaela flicked through a magazine that must have been the last one to roll off the press before society turned over and coughed out its heart.

Then came the return of The Voice. “My apologies for taking so long to come back to you. We’ve had a busy time down here today. You wouldn’t believe the paperwork government departments still need. Good evening to you both.” I looked at Michaela, who smiled. She felt the same; talking to a disembodied voice was weird. Nevertheless, we chorused, “Good evening,” back at the walls.

“Did you both find everything you needed?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“When you shower run the hot water for a while. It takes time to warm up. But, believe me, it gets there in the end.”

Michaela said, “My name is Michaela and I’m here with Greg.”

“Of course, how ill mannered of me.” The Voice sounded as softly spoken as ever. “I never introduced myself.”

“Things were hectic,” I said. “At the time we were just glad to get inside here in one piece.”

“Of course. We’re happy to help. Well, to begin at the beginning, my name is Phoenix…”

Phoenix? That didn’t help. I still couldn’t tell whether Phoenix was a he or a she. Then again, there was something she-male about the voice.

“… my role here is the emergency services coordinator.” Her (His?) voice padded from the speaker. “The center’s commander is Rachel Peake, but if you need anything just press one of the green buttons that you’ll find set in the wall. That pings me.” Phoenix paused before saying pings, as if it had some double meaning for her (or him). “Help yourself to food, drinks, entertainment. It sounds stuffy of me to have to say this, but I need to mention house rules. Please remember, switch off lights when you’re not in a room so we can conserve fuel; please keep the place tidy and dispose of all refuse in the chutes. Doors that are locked are secure areas for authorized personnel only; please respect that and don’t try to force them open. ..” As the Voice continued the do’s and don’t’s I rolled my eyes at Michaela. She stifled a laugh behind her hands, then wagged her finger with a pretend stern look on her face. She mouthed: “Don’t make me laugh. Please!”

“… no windows, for obvious reasons. External doors are hermetically sealed. The atmosphere is recycled. To all intents and purposes you can imagine we’re living in a submarine at the bottom of the sea. We are completely self-contained. Food and fuel stores are amply sufficient. Any questions, Michaela? Greg?”

“Again, we can’t thank you enough for saving our lives,” I said to the four walls. “But what now? After all, we can’t remain here forever, can we?”

“That’s absolutely correct. In the past visitors like yourselves have stayed here for anything up to three days before moving on.”

“Then we could leave now?” I didn’t particularly want to leave at night, but I wanted to test the water.

“Not advisable, Greg. Look at the TV screen.”

We looked at the screen, which showed a police car bouncing up and down the hills of San Francisco. With a flash the scene changed.

“I think you recognize the location. There’s no color because it’s dark outside-the camera is in infrared mode.”

Hell, yes, I recognized it. The TV revealed a view of the astroturf area where we’d been trapped earlier. I saw the Harley, or what was left of the machine. The hornets must have hacked it to pieces in their frustration after we escaped into the bunker. Out on the lawn lay the bodies mangled by the explosions. As we watched a brown bear ambled out of the forest with a pair of cubs. Mama Bear began tearing at one of the corpses with its jaws, ripping out glistening strings of gut. The cubs joined the feast.

I said, “Phoenix? They were landmines that blew the bad guys sky high, right?”

“That’s correct.”

“Then why doesn’t the bear detonate them?”

“Good question.” I sensed Phoenix smiled as he/she spoke. “Antipersonnel mines are embedded in the lawn. For safety reasons I can arm them electronically from a keyboard here. In theory you could have a foot-ball team stomping up and down there without tripping one

… but personally I wouldn’t put it to the test. So when you do leave here stick to the pathways and the drive.”

“Don’t worry, we will.”

Michaela looked closely at the screen. “But it’s clear of hornets now.”

“Hornets?”

“Yes. Bees? Bread bandits?”

“Oh, the refugees? It appears clear here, but let me hit Cam Two. Just wait a second while I… there. Not so friendly out there, is it?”

The screen flashed, replacing the scene with another shot at a lower angle. This must have been the view from our bunker. There, standing unmoving in the darkness, their faces expressionless, was a group of hornets. I counted ten of them. But there could have been more off camera.

“It looks as if we need to stay put a little longer,” I said.

“You’re more than welcome.” Phoenix’s voice whispered around the room. “We know life is hard out there now. Treat this as a rest break.”

Michaela turned away from the impassive, somehow alien faces of the hornets and said to me, “Don’t you feel them, Greg?”

I rubbed my stomach. The Twitch had stayed away. Even seeing the monsters on screen hadn’t done any-thing to provoke my gut muscle.

“Nothing,” I said. “

But I thought you felt this Twitch when you were close to them.” She nodded at the people on screen, waiting for us as patiently as vultures beside a dying calf. “You don’t even have to see them, do you?”

“No. But as Phoenix pointed out, this building is air-tight.”

“So you don’t think this is some kind of sixth sense? That you know when someone’s a hornet by telepathy?”

“Telepathy? No.” Irritation spilled into my voice. This Twitch made me a freak. I never enjoyed talking about it. I didn’t want to discuss it now. “I smell them, that’s all. Cows can smell water in a desert twenty miles away. It’s like that. Unconsciously or subconsciously, or whatever the crap it is I can smell their pheromones, or hormones, or even their fucking hornet shit. I don’t know how the hell it works, Michaela.”

Her eyes widened. She looked hurt by the anger in my voice. “I’m sorry, Greg. I thought this might be an interesting-”

“Experiment?”

“But you-”

“OK, OK.” I softened my voice. “Let’s just leave it, shall we?”

After a heavy silence Phoenix spoke. “I’m sorry; if this is a bad time, I can speak to you later, only I guessed you might have some questions for me.” Another pause. “Greg? You don’t feel well? A stomach-ache?”

“No,” I said, keeping my voice under control. “I’m fine, I really am.”

Pause-leaving that kind of silence you feel obligated to fill.

“It’s, well… when I’m close to a hornet or someone who’s infected and incubating the condition I can tell.”

“But how, Greg? Our medical teams are still working on developing a blood test, but nothing shows in blood or tissue samples.”

Boy, oh, boy, Phoenix is fishing for information. That made me uneasy. “It’s instinct. My stomach muscles get twitchy. That’s all I know.”

Again a silence. I sensed Phoenix-wherever he was, snugged away in the bunker complex-was digesting the information. Yeah, that made me goddam uneasy. Now I didn’t feel like a refugee from the madness of the outside world. I felt like a lab rat just about to be sliced and diced before going under the scope.

Just as I’d decided to be evasive when Phoenix asked the next question the whispery voice said, “I won’t be able to cover everything in detail, but I guess you’re curious about this place. And about its staff.” Brisk now, Phoenix spoke like the guide on a tour bus. “You know there are bunkers like this all over the States, not to mention all the missile silos. They were built in the Cold War in case of attack with nuclear weapons, nerve gas or biological agents, hence the elaborate decontamination procedures you experienced. The bunkers’ purpose was to provide a refuge for medical and administrative staff and a store of food, fuel, hospital sup-plies and so on in the event towns and cities were destroyed by nuclear weapons. It sounds like a tall order, but our job is to safeguard the civilian and military command structure… and to try and pick up the pieces after the radioactive shit hits the fan.”

Michaela said, “I thought these places were built entirely underground.”

“Not all. If we’re disguised as we are and as long as we’re not at ground zero-that’s why these places are situated in wilderness areas-then these can take nuclear blasts without excessive damage.”

“Phoenix, let me get this straight,” I said. “When those guys went crazy last year and started ripping people and whole cities apart your bunker team came out here and locked yourself in?”

“That’s about it. We’re supposed to have a complement of thirty-four. When all hell let loose, twenty made it through. Some of us were brought in by police helicopter. Man, those roads were clogged with cars. I can still smell the smoke of towns burning as we flew over them. Right then, I remember thinking, ‘My God. This is hell. Pure hell.’ ”

Michaela shook her head. “So your people are going to sit here until hell freezes back over?”

“No.” I imagined Phoenix shaking his/her head. “

No, we’re in touch with the government at all levels. Plans are being devised to bring this under control. It won’t happen overnight, but when it does this facility will coordinate the restoration of law and order in this district. Then comes the long job of rebuilding our towns.”

“They are that confident?” I heard skepticism in Michaela’s voice. “You know, it’s a mess out there. Apart from the hornets that pretty much control the state, maybe even the whole country or even the world for all I know, all I’ve come across are small groups of people who are scavenging an existence from the wreckage.”

“Michaela, I didn’t intend to paint a rosy picture, but things will be back under governmental control soon.”

“So you’re in regular contact with these other bunkers?”

“Yes, there are several hundred of them. We all-”

“And the hornets have overrun the entire United States?”

“A temporary state of affairs.”

Michaela stood up to talk to that phantom voice. Suddenly she looked cold, as if she’d begun to see the whole picture-devastation, death, dissolution. “Phoenix, what about the rest of the world? Is it like this in Europe, Asia and Africa?”

“Greg, Michaela, I won’t lie to you. At present, yes, it’s bad. This infection has been like an influenza epidemic that’s gone global.”

“Jesus.”

“After all, we lived in a world of international travel. You could step on a plane and be anywhere on the planet in twenty-four hours. Imagine a typical day at JFK. All those tens of thousands of people flooding through Customs into the country. They’re coming from China, Japan, India, Argentina, Mexico, Kenya, Germany, Russia, you name it. Customs can screen them for cocaine and guns but can’t screen them for what they carry in their blood…”

There was a pause. I could hear the sound of Phoenix breathing. It whispered from the speakers. It could have been the sound ghosts make, soft but sort of shimmering and unreal in the air. I shivered.

“We will beat this.” Phoenix’s voice was hushed. “We will do it. Believe in us.” When the voice came again it was louder, more direct. “Now, I don’t want to keep you up all night. You’ve been through hell today. But first I want to show you something. Although you’ll understand that this is a top-secret establishment, my boss has given me clearance to show you our recreation area. She and I thought you might find it reassuring that although this might appear an unusual place to you, life goes on normally enough. See for yourselves. This is some of our crew at play.”

The TV screen flashed. A banner appeared at the bottom of the screen stating CAM 6: RECREATION. We saw a brightly lit room with potted ferns and a big wall TV screen something like the one we now watched. Some middle-aged guys were watching an old Buster Keaton movie while sipping beers. At the far end of the room a couple of young women played pool. Like this room, there were comfortable armchairs and sofas. Men and women lounged about talking, reading books; an older guy sat at a table writing. As we watched a man in a military uniform walked in with a clipboard under his arm. He shared a joke with the pool girls. They laughed.

Phoenix spoke. “That’s about half the team. The others are at their workstations or sleeping. The white-haired gentleman at the table is Dr. Roestller. Before you go he’ll want to inoculate you.”

“Oh, what against?” Michaela spoke casually, almost as if making conversation, but when I looked at her she made eye contact with me. She seemed suspicious of something.

Equally casual Phoenix said, “We have a multiple vaccine shot. It was developed as a cover-all after a nuclear strike, when sanitation and normal healthcare would be disrupted. Some joker called it the Morning After Armageddon Pill. A single injection protects you against cholera, hepatitis, meningitis, influenza, septicemia, typhoid, malaria, intestinal parasites… all the visitors who’ve passed through here have had the shot. You might be drowsy and run a low fever for a couple of days, but that’s the extent of the side effects.” Phoenix didn’t wait for any answer or further questions. Instead: “Well, I’ve reached the end of my shift. I’m allocated six hours’ sleep now, so I best make the most of it.”

Michaela yawned. “OK, Phoenix, good night.”

“And thank you for taking the time to talk to us.”

“Don’t mention it, Greg. My pleasure. Good night, you two.”

“Good night.”

Silence settled on the room again. Michaela shrugged. “Well, I guess I’m going to turn in.” She gave a tired smile. “It’s going to be novel sleeping in a bed again. I hope I remember how.”