He stops blowing steam from the top of his drink, drains it in one go. Slamming the mug on the table, he says, “I know what you need. You need to get up and walk.”
And I’m already on my feet, thinking, Yes! Finally, this all comes to an end. He only wanted to set me straight about Arlo, and now it is over.
Something doesn’t seem quite right, but he is taking the keys off his belt, and sure enough, he unlocks that door and swings it wide.
A narrow metal staircase rises from the small platform. Up that short flight is the first of the really big doors, which is now propped open. I can’t recall if there were two or three more doors between me and the outside. However many, I can practically smell the outdoors. I’ve always grumbled about summer, about how it can beat the smell out of any living thing; now, I need to smell the open range more than ever.
Instead of going up, Dobbs gestures to the right. “I believe I promised you a tour.”
Only now do I notice that we are in some sort of concrete shaft, that to the right of the platform is a staircase that goes down even further. It is this direction Dobbs intends for me to go.
No, not deeper!
As fast as I can, I belt up the stairs, my footsteps clanging loudly. I clear the first doorway and enter a small concrete corridor. At the other end is another one of those enormous gray-green doors with thick horizontal bars across it, top to bottom. I race through it, and make a sharp left turn. It’s like passing through a maze. I can feel Dobbs behind me, closing in. “Get back here,” he calls.
The concrete corridor takes another right-angled turn. I am about to make the next turn when he grabs me around the neck. He drags me down, whistling happily.
“I’m sorry, but you were hysterical. I didn’t mean to knock you out for so long. Chloroform’s not an exact science.”
I sit up, scratch my mouth where a rash has blistered. He explains that it is from the chloroform. I notice that I am now wearing a yellow dress.
Dobbs holds up his hands when I spring from the cot. Instantly, the room begins spinning.
“Take it easy. You’ve got to wait for the dizziness to pass.”
Dizziness? I put my hands to my head to make sure there isn’t a vise clamped around it.
“Just to be clear, nothing improper happened. I dressed you, is all. When it was called for, I averted my eyes.”
We are in the large round room again, between the partitions where sleeping is supposed to be done. “I want my own clothes.”
He looks at the cubbyhole at the foot of the bed where my clothes are washed and folded neatly. I grab them and storm into the bathroom.
By the time I come out, he has a cup of tea and a slice of toast waiting for me and insists it will help with the nausea. I refuse to eat, and he
refuses to stop talking. I stand by the only door out of this room. On the other side of it is the staircase. I listen for the sounds of thundering footsteps. They’re going to be calling for me soon. I need to be where I can yell back.
“I don’t think you were paying too much attention earlier, but as I said, this is one of twelve silos in the state of Kansas. Nebraska, Oklahoma, and a few other states have theirs, and that’s not counting all the A’s, D’s, and Titans. This here’s the F—the last type of Atlas complex to be built. Where we are now, the upper level, used to be the crew’s living quarters. The lower level is where all the controls were. And, of course, there’s the silo.” He goes over to the central pillar and points to the twelve-inch gap between it and the floor. “You can see the lower level from here.”
He explains that the floor of this level and the identical one below are stacked on top of each other. Forty feet below the ground, both levels are mounted from the ceiling by pneumatic rams. He goes over to a gray cylinder with a gas pressure gauge and assorted steering wheels and spigots. “This is what suspends the floors. They designed it so that if a blast went off on the surface, the whole thing wouldn’t come crashing down.”
Somehow, we are back on the walking tour. Somehow, I am still holding tightly to the belief that if I go along with the lesson, this will all eventually come to an end. There is a chance I can nod my way out. He unlocks and opens the main door again. Briefly, I glance up the staircase, but he shoves me to the right. We go down the flight that makes a half-turn after six stairs. Another six steps and we are directly below the room above. The entrance to this room is not a steel door like the one upstairs. It is more like an office door.
“Welcome to the Launch Control Center.” He unlocks the door and swings it open. We step into another spherical room. At its center is the thick concrete column. Peg-Board partitions divide the space into a series of slice-of-pie-shaped rooms. Against the circular outer wall are angled support beans, a mess of wires, and pipes bent like straws. Dobbs says something about having remodeled the space for “optimized self-sufficiency.”
“Launch what?”
“An ICBM. The A-bomb. You know—
kaboom
?” He makes an exploding gesture.
That’s what people put in a place like this!
“No, no, don’t worry. There isn’t a missile in here anymore. These days, nobody cares that these places even exist, much less the reason they were built in the first place. Most of them were constructed in the early sixties, only to be decommissioned a few years later. Some you could snap up for as little as fifteen thousand dollars. Of course, those were the ones that were vandalized or flooded, and you needed a ton of money to get them halfway livable. Some jokers have spent thousands fitting them with wall-to-wall carpeting and simulated daylight. They bring down all kinds of fancy furniture and stereo equipment and satellite TVs. It’s a disgrace, if you ask me. It’s a mockery of what these structures represent.”
I can’t do anything but nod.
“Ten years ago was when I bought this beauty.”
He raises those colorless eyebrows and presses his lips together so the corners of his mouth turn down. I am obviously supposed to be impressed.
There are three clocks on the wall, each with little plaques beneath them:
DC,
LONDON, MOSCOW
. Somewhere on the other side of the world, people are sitting down for supper, saying grace.
“There was a time when this country took the safety of its citizens seriously. Folks were encouraged to prepare for the inevitable, to be self-sufficient. These days, you talk about fallout shelters, people think you’re nuts. What do they think? The government’s going to take care of them? Now, that’s something to laugh at.”
He opens a plywood door, and we pass into a cubicle he calls the Vault. It’s about the size of my bedroom. In the middle of this space,
stacked back-to-back, are gray cabinets like the ones at the school library where they keep all the index cards.
“You ever heard of the antediluvian period?”
I shake my head.
“You know who Noah is, right?”
He waits for me to nod.
“Well, between the Creation and the Great Flood was the antediluvian period. The Bible calls it a time of great wickedness. People lived too long, so there was overpopulation, and that’s always the main problem right there. It was also a time giants called Gibborim ruled the earth. ‘Men of renown,’ if you read Genesis six. See where this is going?”
Again, I am required to nod.
“The entire world was run by just a few powerful men, and then, bam! Everyone and everything gets wiped out, except for Noah and his family and a few thousand species of animals. Come, I want to show you something.”
Dobbs pulls out a drawer crammed with packets of seeds. “Here’s where I keep the herb seeds.” In another drawer are flower seed packets. “What’s your favorite vegetable?”
I don’t like it in here with him. It’s too tight. He smells of disinfectant. We’re too close.
“Come on. Green beans? Carrots? How about rhubarb? You like rhubarb pie, don’t you?”
Because I can picture Mama cutting thick slices of tomato for sandwiches, I say, “Tomatoes.”
“Fruit.” He pulls open a different drawer. “Heirloom, Roma, plum, cherry—take your pick.” He fans several packs like a hand of cards. “A bunch of scientists have been tampering for years with the genetic makeup of seeds. They’ve got patents on seeds that can’t reproduce themselves. Can you believe that? You can’t grow your own crops without having to go to a seed manufacturer. And who do you think the seed manufacturer works for?”
“The farmers?” I offer cautiously.
Dobbs opens a drawer of another filing cabinet. “Microfiche. In here are newspapers going back one hundred and twenty years. I’ve got photocopies of other documents. The Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Homestead Act, the Test Ban Treaty, you name it.”
“That’s nice.” Now, if we can just get out of this room and go upstairs.
He has me turn around, and I reel backward. On a bookshelf are rows and rows of jars, each one stuffed with some sort of animal. “See why I call this place the Ark? DNA. That’s our ticket to the future.”
He raps on a steel cabinet with a padlock. “We’ll leave insects for another time, but all told, I’ve got DNA samples of two thousand species.”
An adjoining door opens into another wedge-shaped cubicle. He has me face a glass display case of old coins. “These ones are actual gold. Krugerrands. Used to be money had value. Now we’re supposed to be happy with a piece of paper with a string of numbers on it, and sometimes not even that much. You ever been to a bank and asked to see your money?”
Could it be that he has forgotten I’m too young to have a bank account?
“You won’t hear anyone admit it, but there are people—people in our government—doing the same thing as Hitler did. You ever heard of eugenics? Back in the thirties, government scientists worked round the clock trying to come up with the human thoroughbred. Back then, you could go to any county fair and there would be half a dozen judges reviewing the genetic panels of entrants like they were blue-ribbon hogs. Fitter Family Contests, they called them. Next thing, the government started rounding up criminals, mental cases, cripples, people with incurable diseases, you name it, and stuck them in camps and started sterilizing them. They want you to believe that’s all in the past, but you’d be surprised what they’re doing behind the scenes. You have any idea what the welfare costs are for a cripple in this country? Back then, they estimated 1.2 million dollars. Quadruple that amount today. Economics is what it boils down to. Keeping people from draining the system, keeping people from sucking off their profits.”
The last room has a steel wall and a steel door with a keypad. He punches a code, and a soft click releases the dead bolt. It is not much bigger than the walk-in closet Daddy built for Mama. As soon as I see the glass cabinet, I step back. “Nothing to be afraid of,” Dobbs says, pushing me in. He closes the door, locks it, then uses a key to unlock the gun safe.
“This here’s a .38 caliber revolver—the perfect weapon for one of the gentler persuasion. No safeties, easy to load, no magazine to lose, and it doesn’t have the heavy muzzle blast you get with magnum cartridges.” He offers it to me.
I clasp my hands together, shake my head.
“Never heard of a country girl afraid of guns.” He puts it back and takes out another gun. “This is a must-have. The 9mm Glock model
17—it’s my preference over the standard-issue Beretta.” He handles it the way you would a small furry pet. “Bolt-action Winchester 69; that one used to be my grandfather’s. It’s fine for hunting small game, and the ammo is cheap. This is a Mosin-Nagant 91-30. It will stop a moose. And this is my father’s 12-gauge Remington 870.”
In a drawer at the bottom of the safe is ammunition, along with gas masks and a gadget that looks like a game console. He calls it a radiation detector. “The government has hoarding laws, if you can believe that. See if they stop me.” Dobbs laughs, and it sounds exactly like something bound up in a garbage disposal.
“Can we go now?”
He locks the cabinets, then the steel door, and we make the circular route around the central pillar, passing from room to room until we are back on the landing of the lower level.
“Saved the best for last.”
More?
He has to pull me down another six stairs to a tube of corrugated iron about fifty feet long with a diameter of about eight feet. It has a false floor that makes me think of a gangplank off a pirate ship. Running at eye level on each side is a slither of thick cables. The utility tunnel, he calls it. At the far end is the door. Even from fifty feet away, it looks ominous. Everything in me says, Don’t take another step. Whatever he says, do not go in there.
I back up. Dobbs starts shoving again. I dig in my heels. He puts his shoulder into it and leans against me.
“Please, no farther.”
He pushes me all the way to the end. Off to the side are two small rooms. One is not much bigger than the size of Mama’s pantry. He says it’s the battery room. The one next to it is the generator room. Huge contraptions take up the space. He points to big steel drums and tells me they’re the fuel for making our own electricity when the time comes.
“I’m not saying the end’s going to happen tomorrow. When it does, though, we’ll have no time to react. There are some who think it’ll be
biological. Anthrax is easy enough to get your hands on, but it won’t travel well. Smallpox, maybe, if they figure out a way to use it in aerosol form. Can’t be too hard to hack into the grids and shut off the nation’s electricity, but I think it’s those bankers who are going to shut us down. I may be wrong, but whatever it’s going to be, you have to prepare for it all.”
We’re up against the enormous door again. The handle has a thick chain around it with a padlock. I keep my face turned away because I can smell Dobbs sweating with excitement.
“You’re about to see engineering on the level of the pyramids.”
He turns the massive red steering wheel. “Now, we’re already a good sixty feet below the surface, but this baby plummets to a depth of one hundred and seventy-four feet. That’s like an eight-story skyscraper.”
“Please. I don’t want to. I’m afraid of heights.”
For some reason, he finds this incredibly funny.
I can’t imagine how he gets that door open all the way. It’s three times the size of one of those filing cabinets. “Six thousand pounds, right there,” he says.
Even before it has swung all the way open, the pitch dark comes at us like an avalanche. Dobbs’s flashlight is no match for it.
“It can be a little spooky, so you might want to hold on to my arm.”
No, I can’t go in there! He can’t lock me up in there!
“It’s okay, I got you.” Dobbs has a hold of my wrist. I twist, but he won’t let go.
“No!”
“But this is the best part.” His eyes are wide, as skittery as loose marbles.
He pulls me onto some kind of platform. It clangs when we step on it, and a gust of air rushes up through the holes. It’s too deep down here. I don’t even like swimming in deep water. I’m always afraid there are monsters that are going to see that churning water and come all the more quickly. Thrash all you want—the horror is going to reach its tentacles up and grab you by the ankles.