The Compound

Chapter TWENTY

I WANTED TO GO CHECK ON MOM, BUT I DIDN’T DARE. I HAD no idea what Dad was planning, and I knew my time was short. My only chance was to figure out the code using the few numbers I remembered. If it could be figured out. I had to try. Getting out was the only true way to help my mother.

Lexie and Terese were with the little kids. Once Lucas and I were inside, I dragged a dresser in front of the door.

Lexie walked over to me and whispered, “What’s going on?”

I glanced at the others, but they seemed occupied. “I had the code, but Dad stopped me.”

“How? He’s too sick.”

“Well, he got better real frickin’ fast.” I lowered my voice. “Threatened to hurt Lucas if I didn’t give him the paper with the code.”

Lexie’s jaw clenched.

“What about Mom?”

“I don’t know. He may be there. He could be anywhere. I have to figure this thing out.”

Lexie frowned. “I thought he took the code back.”

“He did, but I remember a few of the numbers. They have to mean something; it’s just a matter of putting it together.” I glanced over at a kiddie chalkboard. “I need your help.”

With a piece of chalk, I wrote down the few numbers I remembered.

Lexie stared at the chalkboard. “That’s it? How many numbers in the code total?”

“Way more. At least two dozen.” She breathed out. “Man.”

“Yeah.”

Lexie thought for a bit. “You’re sure about these, though?”

I nodded. “I’m not sure how many numbers in between, but I know these are in the right order. Sort of.”

Terese came over and I told her what we were doing.

“Are they all separate numbers?”

I looked at her. “Why?”

She put a slash on the board.

“July sixteenth, that’s your birthday.”

My mouth dropped open.

She shrugged. “Maybe it’s all our birthdays?”

She put some more numbers on the board.

“That’s Lexie.”

I shook my head. “Those weren’t in it, I’m pretty sure.”

Terese bit her lip. “So it’s not our birthdays.”

As I erased the ones she’d put up, I gazed at the others. So, 7/16 was a date, a date other than my birthday.

I added more numbers.

Lexie leaned in. “What’s that?”

“Date they set off the atomic bomb at the Trinity test site.”

“Nifty. So what are the rest?”

“Oh my God.” Slowly I erased the slash and filled in other numbers. Then I stepped back to read the result.

“Holy crap that’s it.”

Lexie was by my side, looking at the board. “You’ve got it?”

“Part of it.” I pointed. “These are dates of nuclear bomb explosions. Trinity test site, July 16, 1945. Then Hiroshima, August 6, 1945. Nagasaki, August 9, 1945.”

“Wow.” Lexie and Terese spoke together.

I rubbed my eyes. “But that’s not all of it. What else is there?”

Lexie pointed at the first number. “So if they’re all dates, what happened in May?”

“May? Nothing happened in May, they didn’t even…” I trailed off as something flashed in my memory. There had been a test, before July 16. A pretest explosion. It didn’t really count, but could that be it? I wrote in the numbers and hoped I had the date right.

I smiled. “It looks right. No way of knowing for sure, but it all looks familiar.”

Terese patted my shoulder. “So that’s it?”

“No. There were more numbers.” Lexie sighed. “Another date?”

“Probably. There were so many other tests, though. Which date is the one?”

Lexie sat down on the floor. “Isn’t this all ironic? That the code is all about nuclear war, the entire reason this place was built?”

I shrugged. “These dates aren’t really about nuclear war per se, because they’re all bombs built by the same country, and a nuclear war would be bombs from at least two countries, which…”

“What?”

My hand went to my mouth. “Lexie, you’re right.”

“What?”

“The last date.” I put in the numbers.

Terese considered the numbers. “What happened August 29, 1949?”

I smiled. “The first Soviet nuclear detonation.” I looked at Lexie. “There’s your reason for the Compound.” I grabbed a piece of paper and pen, jotted the numbers down, double-checking them three times, then handed them off to Lexie to check as well.

“Do you think that’s it?” Lexie sounded hopeful.

“One way to find out.”

“Can I go?” Lucas stood in front of me.

I set a hand on his shoulder. “Oh, buddy, I need to go fast.”

He stuck out his foot, showing me his cross trainers just like mine. “I can go fast.”

He felt scrawny under my grip. “I’ll come back for you, okay? But now I have to leave.” I shoved aside the dresser. “Lexie, make sure you put this back after I leave.”

She stepped over to me, hesitated, and then gave me a quick hug. “Good luck,” she whispered. “Hurry.”

Again, I found myself running down the hall, into the family room, and through the archway.

This time I didn’t hesitate. My right index finger punched in the numbers. A series of electronic blips sounded. With a loud puff of air, the vacuum seal of the door released. The silver door fell open. Stale air came through.

“Thank you, God.”

I grabbed an edge and pushed the door out of my way. Other than being dusty, the entryway to the stairs was in pretty much the same condition as I’d last seen it six years before.

It seemed smaller. And dimmer. A lone red emergency light lit the area. There was a fuse box on the wall. I opened it and started flipping switches. One flooded the area with light.

I started to climb the stairs two at a time. All that money and Dad couldn’t invest in an elevator? I suppose he thought about what fifteen years without maintenance would do to the machinery and figured stairs were a better idea.

As I climbed the metal stairs, my footsteps were quiet. I thought they should make more noise. The way down had been so loud and chaotic. Maybe I expected that from the trip back up as well.

After two flights, my breaths came faster. I didn’t remember the trip being so arduous the first time. But this trip I was climbing, not descending.

I found myself thinking of the first rainy day of second grade. I was anxious to wear my new blue slicker with matching boots. As always, Mom drove us, me and Eddy in the middle seats.

We stopped for her coffee at Tully’s, the smell of it filling the SUV as we turned into the school driveway. We sat in a line of other cars as they idled at the entrance and gently ejected their small passengers. Vivaldi played on the radio and the heater blew warm air, pleasantly overheating us.

Waiting our turn, I adjusted my backpack and got a better grip on my blue lunchbox, which held the same thing every day, packed by Els. Peanut butter sandwich, decrusted and cut diagonally into fourths. Minicarrots. A snack bag of chocolate chip cookies. They came with a napkin and a sweet, tender note from my mom, ending always with

ILY Eli! Mommy.

The SUV moved up. We popped open the doors. Mom blew kisses and waved good-bye. We shrieked, jumping boot first into the downpour, ecstatic to be seven years old on a rainy day.

I wanted that again. That security that came from knowing exactly what was in my lunchbox. I wanted that so bad.

At the top of the stairs, I saw the hatch. I didn’t remember it being so wide, but then I basically got shoved down it the first time. There hadn’t been a lot of time for observation. A skinny set of steps ascended and I took them nearly in one leap.

I pushed on the hatch. Didn’t budge. I panicked, thinking maybe Dad had Phil or someone seal us in.

Driven by adrenaline, I shoved with my hands as hard as I could. I felt it loosen a tiny bit, enough for a little dirt to dribble in around the edge. I relaxed. Soil had probably accumulated over the opening. Maybe we weren’t trapped. My fingers reached through, pushing dirt out of the way, pulling some of it inside. I still couldn’t garner enough leeway to get my hand out to work away the rest of the dirt.

Once more I strained, shoving my hand out the slim opening. The hatch didn’t move any more. I tried to pull my hand back in.

It was stuck. Stuck in the cookie jar of the outside world.

“No, no, no!”

If I yelled for help, would my family hear me?

“Crap!”

Someone grabbed my leg. “Need a hand?”

I didn’t even have a chance to look at my father before he started yanking me downward, out of the hatch.

“No!!” My hand was stuck, and his violent wrenching was going to break my wrist. “Stop!” I kicked out with my legs as I tried to anchor myself up.

Dad was almost breathless as he kept on trying to pull me out. “Did I surprise you? Because you sure as hell surprised me, figuring out the code like that.”

Each comment was emphasized by a hard yank, each one making me want to scream out in pain.

“How’d you do it? Memorize the numbers? There was maybe enough time, maybe enough time, but I didn’t think so, a lot of numbers to remember, the human mind can really only process seven at a time, that’s why phone numbers are seven digits long…”

The pain in my wrist got so bad I couldn’t follow his rambling. I tried to kick out at him. “Stop! Stop it!” My cries echoed in the space as I tried to concentrate. Tried to plan. No one was going to save me. He was hurting me. There was only one way to make it stop. I looked down at him the best I could, waiting for the right moment.

“You know how I figured it out, Dad?”

He paused to look up at me, like he really wanted to know.

“You taught me well.” I stood on my left leg and flailed out with my right foot as hard as I could. I felt it connect with his face, so I did it again, finding even more strength. He fell away, lost his balance, and tumbled down the first flight of stairs.

With his muttering over, it was quiet except for my panting. I wiped the sweat out of my eyes with my good hand. At the landing, I couldn’t see him, only one of his fingers. It wasn’t moving. I was terrified it would start up again. I was terrified it wouldn’t.

I regained my footing so I could shove my hand back up, try to stop the pressure from the hatch.

How long would I have to stay like that? I hung my head and tried to regroup my strength and sanity.

“Eli?”

My head swung toward the voice. Lucas stood there in his blue outfit. He was breathing hard and looking up at me. “What happened to… him?”

“He tried to stop me from going out. He hurt me.”

Lucas frowned. “That was mean.”

“Yes, yes, it was.”

He climbed the stairs and stood beside me. “You shouldn’t have put your hand in there.”

“I know.” I tried to remain patient, keep my tone level. “It was stupid. But I need you to help, okay?”

He nodded.

There wasn’t enough time to send him all the way back down to get Lexie or Terese. Not with Dad lying there. I had an idea. “Do you think you can climb up my back?”

He looked me up and down. “I think so.”

Although I was tethered to the hatch by my arm, I was able to bend one knee so he could get a foothold to clamber up to my shoulders.

“Thataway. Now, go on up to my neck.”

He seemed hesitant.

“Lucas, you can lean right on that wall with one hand.”

He was in place, his legs twisted around my shoulders. He hardly weighed anything. “Good job. Okay, here’s what you need to do. Try and reach through the opening where my hand is. See if you can’t push some of that away. Pull it in if you have to.”

My face was tilted up to check his progress. I was rewarded with a clump of dirt right in my open mouth.

I spit it out. “You’re doing great.”

A few more minutes and he had freed my hand. I rubbed the raw wrist. Nothing broken, but it still hurt like hell. I would deal with the pain later. Both of my hands went to hold his legs. I urged him to keep moving dirt. Finally he’d moved enough for me to get my hands through the opening. I set him down so I could work. But I got to a point where I couldn’t reach any more dirt. The hatch was nowhere near open enough. At least not open enough for me.

I looked at him. “Lucas, do you think you can squeeze through there?”

“I think so.”

“You might get a little more dirt on you.”

His eyes widened. “Real dirt? Like where the worms in my book live?”

I laughed. He hadn’t ever seen real dirt. Didn’t realize that’s what he’d been shoving aside for the last half hour. “This is real dirt.” I picked some up from the floor, sifting it through my fingers.

He grinned.

I lifted him up on my shoulders.

“Here I go.” He squeezed through the opening. I felt funny watching his little legs kick, then disappear from my view. Maybe I was feeling protective.

“Okay, Lucas. Now, can you kick all the dirt off the hatch?”

Silence.

“Lucas?”

His muffled voice was loaded with wonder. “Are these real stars?”

My hands clutched the edge of the hatch harder. I leaned my head on the wall. It was nighttime. My voice quivered. “Yeah, buddy. Those are the real thing.”

Kicking sounds started.

Shoving even harder, I needed to see the night for myself. I felt the hatch give way, creaking upward until it flopped over, lying flat.

My head emerged into the summery air, fresh and heavenly. I breathed deep. The breeze blew cool against my face.

Lucas stood there, looking up. His mouth was wide open.

I stepped all the way out. My eyes shifted upward, seeing what he saw.

The night sky seemed like it was there just for us. I’d forgotten how beautiful stars were. And the moon. It wasn’t much more than a sliver. I knelt beside Lucas and pointed it out. He was seeing it all for the first time. It was like the first time for me as well. I stood, and took a few steps as I smiled up at the sky.

There were so many things I’d taken for granted. So many things I hadn’t appreciated. So many things I’d missed. Too many to even comprehend. “There’s so much for you to see. I can’t wait to show you.”

The light from the hatch went out.

I turned around. “Lucas?” The moon wasn’t bright enough to light the night for me. “Lucas?” I reached out, took a step toward where he had last been. My foot brushed the edge of the hatch. I knelt down to touch it.

The hatch was closed. And I was on the outside.