Started Tuesday.March 3.2009 at 9:26 pm – Ended Monday.August 31.2009 at 12:40 pm
Isolation
“Good morning Paul. How are you holding up today?” I ask, carrying his tray of food.
“How do you think? You’ve asked me that stupid question everyday since we got here,” Paul growled. “Just slide me the food.”
I smile to myself and slide the tray under the gap between the steel door and the floor tiles. I can understand how he’s feeling. It’s been seven months since the lockdown, so a little bit of cabin fever is to be expected. I carry my trays along the hall and, in much the same way, greet, and then provide food to, everyone else. There are six of us left. There were seven, but I’ll get to that later.
After I do my rounds, I sit in my favourite corner of the hall, with nothing but my thoughts and tray of food. I’m sure the others are doing much the same thing right now. No one really talks during meals anymore. I guess that’s a statement to how good Dr. McCrimmons food is. Doc C was supposed to be our medic, but when the lockdown happened, he was in the kitchen. Now he’s our cook. Turns out all he wanted was a slice of pie.
After we all finish eating, Brock in the control room flips on the old intercom system. The intercoms were in the process of being installed when we got here and haven’t really been completed, so the broadcast is spotty at best.
“The time is now 10:32 of day 227. Annie, you’re up. What are we reading today?” he says.
“Today, we are reading chapter seventeen,” she answers, her voice crackling and warping.
Now, one of the advantages of being stuck in the central hallway is that I had space to move around. Which means I could, for example, stand by one of the doors and, because of the gap at the bottom, reap some fringe benefits of whatever was happening inside. I could smell Doc C making some food, for example. But right now, I wanted to listen to Annie. While everyone else had to listen through low grade speaker pods, all I had to do was walk over to her library door and lie down. No clicks, no pops, no distortion. She began reading. I didn’t really care for the story, but I’d always found her voice soothing and relaxing. Now, I don’t mean to say her voice was boring or monotone. No, not at all. I don’t really know how to explain it. Maybe it was the emotion she put into the characters voices. Maybe it was the tone. Maybe it was the way she reminded you of your favorite bedtime story as a child. Her voice had a certain peace to it. The kind of peace that puts you into a trance and lets your mind wander.
I let my mind wander around the bunker we were trapped in. It was excessively large, originally build to hold 7,000 people. To save space, it was all on one level and instead of having several small rooms with the same purpose, there would be one large room. For example, the laundry room had 3,500 washing machines and would otherwise take up enough floor space to comfortably house a family of twenty. All of the rooms, while being very large, were more or less built identical to one another. Generic pods attached to the central hall. All had the same ‘sterile white’ walls. All had speaker pods and SecuriCAMs in the same places. And each and every one of them had the same steel blast doors that were wired to, when activated, drop from the ceiling and protect the occupants of that particular room. These large rooms were all equally spaced along either side of a understandably large T shaped hallway. My hallway.
At the bottom of the T were the sleeping quarters, and at the top was an ante room. The ante room was slightly shorter than the others and functioned as both a waiting room and a quarantine, and was the only exit to the outside world. It was also separated from the hallway by ten foot thick, perfectly clear, PolYfaxo double glass doors. It’s as if the architect was playing a joke on me, wherever he was. Watching. Laughing. Look, but never touch. Never leave. Every morning, if you could call them that, I would wake up and see the piles of supplies and tools just sitting there on the other side. Calling me. They could leave any time they wanted. Just walk up the ramp to the elevator and ride the impossible ride thousands of miles up to the surface. But no. They just stood there. Stood watching. Judging. That was the worst of all. Everyone else were locked away in their metal rooms. Locked and sealed behind steel doors stopping a half foot above the floor. For them, it would be a boon if they even got out into the hall. No such hope for me. I never had the heart to tell them that even if ALL of them got into the hall, it would take us two months to push the doors open far enough to get to the elevator. And that’s if they weren’t locked. I touch the name tag on my lab coat and remember better days.
The silence wakes me from my thoughts. Annie had finished reading and everyone had turned off their speaker pods and went back to work. Doc C cooking lunch, Stuart synthesizing vitamin D pills in the infirmary, Brock rooting around the control panel messing with the wiring, and Paul was washing the dishes. Annie was supposed to be researching the shelves and shelves of books, but I was going to see to it that that wouldn’t happen. I slide the book she had lent me, and I had finished, under the door to get her attention.
“So, what do you have for me today?” I ask playfully.
“You won’t be getting anything if you keep treating my books like hockey pucks.” I see her feet as she walks over and picks up the book. “So what did you think of it?”
“It was great,” I lie. “I really LOVED how the underlying message that was conveyed by the authors prose implied that any attempt at true advancement was futile. Very optimistic.”
“Well, you asked for a sad story. How was I supposed to know that Frank the Fluffy Bunny was too much for you?”
“Next time, I want an actual book, okay? Preferably one without pictures.”
She laughs. I lay down on the floor and position my head so I can see through the gap into the room. “So, how’re you holding up?”
She lies down on her side of the door and looks at me, her blonde hair puddling on the floor. “I’m half way through the books on the fifth Standard Procedures shelf and still not a word on how to open these doors. Not looking good. Although, there still are the Maintenance and Electronic Equipment sections, each with about ten shelves so…” She let the sentence trail off for a bit before picking it back up. “Let’s not give up hope just yet, Captain,” she grinned.
I smile back. “No, I meant YOU. How are YOU doing in there?”
“Oh, I’m doing fine. Being stuck in a room with almost every book ever written; it’s like a dream come true. Just that it’s…”
She didn’t need to finish. We all felt it. Some more than others. The loneliness. Stuck in a room with nothing but appliances, or in Annie’s case, books, for companionship. Some were more affected by it than others. Doc C for example, took to naming each of the forks.
Annie and I just lay there and stare at each other for a few moments. I stare into her eyes. She had beautiful eyes. As well as other features which I won’t-
She clears her throat. “Well, I… umm, better get back to scanning the books. Yeah.”
“Yes, right! Right. I’ll… be… umm, here in the hall. Doing my rounds.” I smile. “Nice talking with you, Annie.”
“You too Steve. I mean… Captain.”
I get up off the floor and dust myself off. I hear a sound. The other end of the hall. Where the “lid” of the T was. I quickly turn. Out of of the corner of my eye I see something move. Just for a second. Then nothing. No movement. I can’t even be sure there was movement. The hall was so long. I jog over to Brock’s door and kick it to get his attention.
“Hey, Brock. The SecuriCams. They’ve got a feed on the intersect, right?”
“Yeah, Cap’n. Why?”
“Is there anything there?”
“You alright, Cap?”
“Yeah, great. Just answer the question.”
“Nope. I’m lookin at her right now. Nuttn’ there. Just like the last seven months.”
“Alright, thanks. Uhhh, Annie says she hasn’t got anything yet on the wiring. You?”
“Naw, Cap. I’m soldering blind here. I mean, I’se got some educated guesses, but, you know.”
“Alright. Just keep up the good-”
Another sound. Same as the first. I sprint down the hallway. I reach the end in a record three minutes. Nothing. I look down the branch on the left. Nothing. The branch on the right. Nothing. I start to turn when I notice it. A muddy boot print. A single muddy print on the sterile white tiled floor. A single muddy print from the standard issue combat boots we all wore. Only, the thing is, it’s been a long time since any of us were on any semblance of dirt, let alone mud. The print was pointed in my direction. I put my hand on my holster and draw my gun as I turn around.
There he was. Not two feet in front of me. Marshall. He was just standing there. Great big trademark grin on his face. He was wearing what he was wearing the last time I saw him. Exactly the same. Right down to the red mark around his neck from when he had decided to end it.
“It can’t be.” I say in shock. “Marshall, you’re-”
“Dead? Oh yes, quite so. Stone dead. I have been for a while now, don’t you remember?” He talks offhandedly. As if he were talking about the weather. “I just couldn’t take it anymore. The smell! You wouldn’t believe the stench of it! All that decay.” His grin fades for a moment and looks down at his hands. He snaps his head back up, grin and all. “Good job, though. Keeping everyone else alive? Great job. Couldn’t have been easy. And, oh come on! Lower the gun. It’s not like it’s going to do anything, what with me being dead and all. There we go.” His face grows serous again. “Time is almost up.”
“What?”
“Party’s almost over, time to blow out the candles.”
“What?”
“Oh, you’ll find out soon enough.” For a split second, he changes. He looked as he would have looked, after all these months. Vines wrapping around his legs and arms, ironically blending with the jungle camouflage of his fatigues. Lips blue and neck bent at an inhuman angle. And then it was gone. And he grinned. “See you around.”
And with a wave, he walks past me. He keeps walking. Through the glass doors like they aren’t even there. He walks lightly around the supplies and equipment on the other side, and enters the elevator. He presses a button and with a final grin, the elevator sinks into the ground.
I run down the hall. Faster than I ever have before. Past the laboratory, past the mess hall. I reach the Command Center first and pound on the door.
“Hey Brock, I need you to activate the defense turrets. Can you do that for me?”
“What? Yeah, why?”
“Just do it. Something big is going to happen and I want us to be ready for it. Send out an announcement.”
“Whatever you say, Cap.”
He presses some buttons and, on the ceiling, between the entrance and the first two room doors, descend a pair of heavy duty defense turrets. Each one capable of turning an elephant into ground beef in three seconds flat. At the same time, the intercom beeps to life.
“Listen up, boys and girls. The Cap just-”
Everything goes dark. The machinery falls silent. I hear faint cries of surprise from behind the occupied doors.
“Brock! What’s happening?”
“I don’t know, sir. Everything just shut down! I don’t-”
Red emergency lights suddenly flash on from within the ceiling and floor. Sirens ring. A loud mechanical voice booms over the intercom. INTRUDER ALERT. FACILITY HAS BEEN BREACHED. WARNING, PROTOCOL 17 IS NOW IN EFFECT. PROTOCOL 17 IS NOW IN EFFECT. FACILITY WILL BE PURGED IN *static* MINUTES.
I hear something fall to the ground inside the room. Brock starts panicking. “What? Purged? What does that mean? How much time do we have? I ain’t dying in this stupid bunker!” I hear him throwing equipment against the door. I see smaller bits of equipment slide out under the door.
SMASH
I try to calm him down. “Brock, listen to me! That’s not going to work! I need you to calm down and contact the others. Can you do that?”
He answers by throwing more equipment. “Let me out! Let me out! Why won’t this stupid door open? OPEN!”
SMASH
“Brock? Brock! Can you hear-”
SMASH SMASH SMASH
I punch the door in frustration. The hall lights are blinking now. Alternating between the regular sterile white walls and dim red emergency lights. I look back at the door. Brock, if he could even hear me, would be in full out panic mode. Okay. Okay. As long as I keep calm, everything is going to be fine. The others. I should check on the others. I only have… I don’t even know how much time I have! An hour? Five minutes? Thirty seconds?
I run to the closest occupied door. On my way, I try to make an educated guess on the time. Okay. It’s automated, so it’s likely to be a round number. That narrows it down. Umm, it said something about intruders, so it’s security, so it would have to be quick. That narrows it down. Or immobilizing. No! No time for second guessing. It would have to be quick. I mentally cross off ‘an hour’ in my head. That narrows it down. A security system that would purge the facility of intruders. But how?
I reach the door. The Doc’s kitchen. It’s quiet inside. I pound on the door.
“Doc, you okay? You need to stay calm, understand? Doc?” No response. I hit the floor and look through the gap. The room was a mess. Drawers and cabinets all open, their contents and condiments spilled onto the floor. Bottles of vinegar and ketchup and lemon juice puddled around. And on the floor, sitting against one of the hundreds of refrigerators, was Doctor McCrimmon. His eyes were closed, as his chest rose and fell, and he had the happiest look on his face that I’d ever seen. He was holding an empty syringe in his hand. He had doped himself. Some kind of homemade morphine or something.
Up and running again. Okay. The purge. It would have to be automatic. That narrows it down. It would have to be automated. That narrows it down. It would have to be quick. That narrows it down. It would have to be able to clear the whole facility. That narrows it down. It would have to not damage any of the equipment. That narrows it down. The inhabitants? How important were they to the builders? There would have to be some sort of evacuation time. At least for those that knew what to do. There would have to. Big human rights protest, otherwise. That narrows it down. Evac time could overlap with whatever charging time was needed for it to activate, so… that would give us… I look down at my watch.
“Oh crap.”
Out of time! Only one more stop. Any more than that would be pushing it. Oh, why did it have to be so far away?
I bolt down the hallway, my lab coat billowing behind me. Faster than I’ve ever run in my life. Running all the way to the back of the hall. The last door. Her door.
I hit the floor. “Annie! Annie! Are you there?”
“Steve? Steve, what’s going on?” She was lying on the ground on the other side of the door.
“Everything is going to be okay, Annie. It’s going to be over soon.” I reach across the door and take her hand.
“I’m scared,” she says.
“Annie, there’s something I need to tell you. Annie, I… I-”
She smiles a weak smile and squeezes my hand. “Its okay, Steve. I know. Me too. ”
“No, that’s not it. You don’t understand.” I look into her eyes. “Annie, I-”
Suddenly an impossibly loud beeping blares through the facility. It sounds as if it’s coming from below the tiles on the floor. The beeps get closer together. Between the beeps I can faintly hear the whirr of machinery powering up from beneath me. The ground starts to rumble.
A voice, so clear it could have come from right behind me, said: “No hard feelings, eh, buddy?”
Then a brilliant flash of light as everything went bla-
//Seven Months Ago//
I hold the microphone in my hand and bring it up to my face.
“This is… Is this thing on? This is Professor Stephen Ovellette, the time is shortly after one in the after noon. I am preforming preliminary examinations of RQDX928, affectionately referred to by the staff as Bunker 17. Also with me is my colleague, Doctor Leonard Holt. Lenny, stop waving. It’s audio, not video. We have just stepped out of the elevator. Travel time was a bit long. Might want to speed it up a bit. Walking through the ante room now. This place is magnificent, Lenny! The size of the place! The furnishing seems to be going rather smoothly. A few microscopes and ping pong tables and such are still awaiting placement.”
As I walk on, I see several construction workers carrying furniture from the ante room onto their little hover trolleys and pushing them down to the required rooms. I also see several scientists who took Lokalt’s advice and have shown up early and claimed their equipment. I can’t blame them. This place was designed to be an underground paradise. The place for the worlds best and brightest to ‘ride out the storm’ as it were. Enough food, water, and medicine for three square a day for every living thing on the planet. And more entertainment than one could ever dream of experiencing within a single lifetime. The movie room, for example, had enough movies to blow your eyes clear out of your head. The exercise room had the latest Low-Impact-Low-Gravity exercise machines, you know, for those active types. Frankly, Bunker 17 had everything needed to keep a small city in peak physical condition for at least a dozen generations. And with all the prototype experimental top secret equipment brought in by the ‘best and brightest’ when it’s time to resurface, we could repopulate the planet with a race of super humans. Within a reasonable degree, of course.
This was all going through my head as I repeated “And… we’re walking, and we’re walking, and we’re walking,” into the microphone as we walked across the ante room and into the hall.
“Are you sure we should be letting all these construction workers see all this equipment?” Lenny asked. “I mean, the fission reactor? The sub-molecular interocitor? The recursive spline reticulator? The atomic vector plotter? Isn’t this a rather large security risk?”
“Nothing to worry about. Their minds are wiped after each shift, and their families receive a big, fat wad of money. No harm no foul. Let’s check in here first.” I re-adjust the microphone.
“We are entering the first door on the right, Laboratory Alpha-A-01. It is across the hall from the room that is designated as the Control Center, and a little down from the Greenhouse. Let’s see here… The equipment all looks fine… The placements are according to blueprints exactly… Oh, what’s this?” I pull a pad of paper and a pencil out of a pocket on my lab coat. “It appears that Fume Hood-… Delta… 26. That’s right, Fume Hood-Delta-26 has sustained a major fracture to the hood,” I make a note on the pad as well. “Looks like someone’s getting more than a mind wipe today,” I mutter to myself. “How about we check the defense system, eh?”
We walk over to the wall. Specifically, the third wall panel from the right of the door. I place the tips of my fingers against the sterile white composite plastic wall for a few seconds and then, with a hiss, the panel pops out and swings open, revealing a computer. I begin typing on the computer. Right before I finish, I move my mouth closer to the microphone on the computer and change it’s setting. “This is Professor Stephen Ovellette. I am initiating a test of the blast doors in Laboratory-Alpha-A-01. Please stand clear.” A few seconds later, I finish typing and with a DEEDLE-DE-DEET, and the sliding of metal, the blast door falls shut.
“Let’s go take a look at this door,” I say to Lenny. Five minutes later, I’m at the back of the lab yelling at a construction worker.
“The doors stop half a foot off the ground! How will that possibly protect ANYONE from ANYTHING? Are- are you stupid, or something? Gas could leak in. A GRENADE could be thrown in. The people in here would be vulnerable to any sort of mode of attack that was smaller than half a foot!”
The construction worker scratches his chin. “And, you are…”
“Me? Look at this name tag, buddy! Professor Stephen Ovellette. I’m the most intelligent person in the room,” I turn to Lenny. “Sorry Lenny.” He shrugs his shoulders. I continue. “And I’m telling you right now, very clearly, that those doors need to close completely!”
“Your measurements were off,” the man says.
“Excuse me?”
“Your measurements for the door were off. By half a foot, apparently.”
I glare at him. “Then go topside, and FIX IT!”
He rolls his eyes and walks toward the hall.
“I’se is gonna needs youse to opens up this door first,” he says. I walk over to the panel and press some buttons. After the door rises, I shut the panel.
I continue doing my rounds in the Lab. A few minutes later I go back to the door to check on the worker. He had reached the elevator and was waiting for it to arrive. I had turned around and started back deeper into the Lab when I heard the gunshot. I look into the hallway and, out from the elevator, pour several people with heavy automatic rifles. At the foot of the elevator, lay the body of the construction worker.
Their leader looks to be a large, young looking man with cold blue eyes. His head is covered in face paint and he has a scar running clear across his face. He towers over the others. His arms look as if he could throw a house across a continent in his lunch break. He fires his gun in the air.
“Everybody freeze!” He bellows. Everyone in the hall stops dead in their tracks. He points his gun at one of the scientists and fires. “Now,” he continues. “Everybody RUN!”
Panic.
People running.
Gunfire.
In seconds it was over. Too fast for us to have done anything. No time for the doors. No time for the turrets. I’m sure there were others, doing what Lenny and I did. Others in the other rooms. Hiding. The man turned to his troops.
“All right. Y’all know what to do. You, put the bodies into the Greenhouse room. Everyone else, clear out the rooms, and then we’ll bring in the rest of our people from up top.” He cocks his gun. “Let’s roll!”
They all calmly walk toward the rooms. One of them starts lifting a body. The big man walks towards the laboratory.
I turn to Lenny. “Lenny, we need to hide. It’s going to take him a few minutes to get here, but I have a plan,” I pick up some equipment up off the floor and hand it to him. “We’ll need this.”
We run to the back of the Lab, picking up the equipment I would need on the way. We reach the back wall and hide behind one of the larger pieces of machinery. I tell Lenny my plan, and we start putting the pieces together. It was a long shot, but it might just get us out of here.
The man reaches the door to the Lab. “Everybody in place? Alright. Sweep it clean, people!”
He walks into the Lab. He looks back and forth, searching for any survivors. Lenny and I were hiding behind a Fusion Pod near the door. When the man was far enough away, I look into the hallway. The coast was clear. I give Lenny the signal and he runs out towards the elevator as quickly, and as quietly as he could. He runs with one hand on the sharp, long piece of metal in his pocket and one of the devices I had made, strapped to his other arm. I had one on my arm as well. It measured our heart rate and, if it stopped, it would send a panic signal to Bunker 17’s security system and initiate a lockdown. Not the best idea, but probably enough leverage to give us safe passage to the elevator. The only thing I could make with spare parts. Perhaps some of the other survivors in the other rooms would come up with some better plans. If there were other survivors.
The elevator would still work under lockdown conditions, so if one of us didn’t make it, the other…
I look back down the hall. Lenny had made it to the ante room and was hiding behind a couch. Just like we planned. Now it was my turn. I leap to my feet and bolt into the hall. I turn and run towards the ante room. Faster than I’ve ever run in my life. Running all the way to the front of the hall. I hear a click behind me. I stop suddenly.
“Not so fast, egghead.”
I turn around. There standing in the hall, was the man with the blue eyes. His gun was pointed directly at me. I put up my hands. A voice from one of the other rooms calls out.
“Is something going on?”
“No, it’s fine,” the man shouts back. “Just found a survivor. A scientist, by the looks of it. Tried to make a break for it.” He laughs as he walks towards me.
“Clear!” shouts a voice from one of the rooms.
“Clear!” shouts another voice.
“Clear!” shouts another.
“Clear!” shouts another.
“Clear!” shouts another.
The man pokes me with the gun and smiles. “Looks like you’re the only one left, egghead.”
I clear my throat.
“You need to let me go,” I say. “See this thing on my arm? If you kill me it-”
“That’s a good idea,” he says. And he fires.
As I fall to the ground I hear him shout into the Greenhouse room, at the man standing beside a sizable pile. “Got room for one more? Haha ha!”
When I hit the ground, the man reaches down and takes my lab coat. As he puts it on, he looks at the name tag and chuckles. “Would ya look at that! My name is Steve too!”
The man squats down beside me and smiles. “No hard feelings, eh, buddy?”
I hear a DEEDLE-DE-DEET, and the sliding of metal. All the blast doors fall shut, the glass doors close, and I smile.
---[Vital Junk Misplaced]-- 