Interrupt (40 page)

She rapped on the door of the third trailer. It had been divided into a computer room and the bunker’s only jail cell. A soldier opened up. He was often on duty here. “Dr. Flint,” he said.

“I’d like to talk to him, please.”

“Sure. Let me call it in.”

Securing permission was standard operating procedure, but Emily worried she might be denied because of the misunderstanding inside the complex.

She paced restlessly between the trailer and another stairwell into the complex. This hatch was always locked except when the prison guard changed shifts, yet Emily paused, then moved closer when a familiar shape caught her eye.

A tiny cross had been etched into the third step from the top. This cross had a formation like an A alongside it. Her first thought was someone had found a new way to carve their initials, separating the two letters while uniting them with the crucifixes, but she couldn’t think of anyone whose initials were A. H. or H. A.

The slashes might not be letters at all. What if they were hash marks? Was there anything to count except the movements of the soldiers… ?

You’re being paranoid,
she thought.
You’re tired.

But some of the people in this bunker were
very
smart, and others were sick with grief. What if they were planning something dangerous?

Standing at the ladder, Emily’s mind raced like a stopwatch flickering down to zero. Suddenly the Air Force captain’s shouting made sense. He’d acted like she was a rat because the base personnel were concerned. She wasn’t the only one with personal ties to the soldiers. Other informants might have passed on rumors or clues.

Emily knew there were civilians who wanted into the complex. Eight days ago, she’d overheard a group of men whispering that Strickland should empty the tunnel and let everyone live behind the blast door. The crowding would be insufferable, but there was a larger issue.

If the war with China boiled over, nuclear strikes outside the mountain would kill everyone in the tunnel, which was designed to absorb and deflect blast waves away from the complex. Emily had expected a noisy meeting on the subject. Nor could she blame them. A few VIPs had been rescued with their dependents. Among the sixty-four civilians were five children, a wife, and two husbands with no strategic value, merely the good luck to be rescued. The need to protect them might have twisted someone’s thinking beyond the normal instinct of self-preservation.

If a few conspirators were using Jake’s meetings to cover their own activities, that could explain why his votes were increasing. If Emily was plotting something herself, she’d push Jake to raise as much hell as possible. He was a diversion.

What did they want? Did they have guns?

You can’t let anyone see you staring,
she realized, whirling from the crucifix. She couldn’t get inside the complex to warn the soldiers until they unlocked the doors, but maybe she could use the prison guard’s phone.

She ran to the trailer. “Sir?” she asked. “Sir?”

If someone was plotting a takeover, she’d missed the signs. She was definitely not welcome among the innermost circles of the refugees. They’d seen her with Bugle and Drew—and no one was sure what to make of her friendship with Marcus Wolsinger.

BUNKER SEVEN FOUR

T
he guard waved for Emily to come into the trailer. He was alone, although the small front room held two chairs, two desks, and a coffee maker with several mugs. A space heater sat on the laminate floor. Old paperback books, DVDs, and a thirteen-inch TV filled a table in the corner. An ordinary telephone hung on the wall.

“Can I use your phone?” she asked. “I need to talk to someone in charge.”

“I thought you were here to see Dr. Wolsinger.”

“I am. I… Please. It’s important.”

The guard looked her up and down. She must have sounded as nervous as she felt. He went to the phone and lifted the handset without turning his back on her. It was a direct line. He didn’t need to punch in a number. “Holding cell,” he said. “Dr. Flint is asking for an officer now.” His eyes narrowed. “Copy that.”

What were they telling him?

He hung up and said, “Ma’am, we’re on alert. Everyone’s occupied.”

“Some of the people in the tunnel are planning something,” she said. “I don’t have much proof, but you guys need to know. There might be trouble.”

“You mean Jake?”

“I don’t know. I hope it’s nothing.”

“I’m going to ask you to go into Wolsinger’s room,” he said. “You’ll be safe there.”

Right,
she thought.
Then you’ll have me in jail, too.
Maybe it was her best move. If she went into Marcus’s cell, the guard would realize she wasn’t a threat.

Emily walked down the hall as the guard reached for his phone again. Sign-in sheets hung on a nail. Many of the signatures were hers, although plenty of people consulted with Marcus. She recognized Drew’s tidy handwriting among the names. Apparently she’d almost run into him two days ago.

Where was he now? Hunting more blood samples for her outside?

As she entered her name on the list once more, she prayed it wouldn’t be the last time. She couldn’t believe the situation was that bad—but on the phone behind her, the guard said, “I may need backup.”

Marcus’s door wasn’t locked. He had a bathroom and they brought him food, so he had no excuse for leaving. If he did, he’d meet the guard in the front room. His sole window was inches from the rock face of the cavern.

Emily knocked, then knocked again. He didn’t answer. She opened the door an inch and leaned into the gap without looking. “Marcus? It’s Emily.”

“Hey, girl.”

Good,
she thought.
He sounds good today.
“Can I come in?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said without humor.

She stepped into the neat, narrow room. He sat on his cot. She stayed by the door. There had been a time when she was physically afraid of Marcus and required an escort. He wasn’t eating, so he’d lost most of his desk belly, but he would always outweigh her, and her first impressions of him had been as he recovered from his Neanderthal state.

Even now, they never engaged in contact like a handshake. He had become a sounding board and a mentor to her—a father figure—yet she hadn’t let go of her suspicion. Today his expression was open and coherent. Sometimes it wasn’t.

When he turned sullen, Emily could only guess what he was thinking based on the things he’d told her and the reports of science teams worldwide. Did he remember being Nim and yearn for it? Or was his anguish for his son too much to endure?

Emily would have been interested in having a neurologist examine Marcus and run CT and MRI scans. Had he suffered permanent brain damage during his three days in the pulse? Or would a psychologist be more useful in treating him?

“I’m sorry I haven’t come for a while,” she said.

“I know you’re busy.”

“Yes.”

“How are things outside?” he asked, allowing her the charade of chitchat.

For him,
outside
meant the larger space of the bunker.

Shells within shells,
Emily thought. His room was a minuscule box inside a cave beneath a mountain on the surface of a planet circling a violent sun lost in one measureless stretch of the galaxy. It made her feel insignificant.

“I have new data,” she said, showing him the files under her arm.

Marcus wasn’t looking. He glanced at the door, easily reading her tension. Emily realized she was standing on the balls of her feet.

“Something’s wrong,” he suggested.

“I—” Emily cleared her throat and took her usual chair in the corner. Marcus stayed on his cot, where he leaned against the wall with his blankets up to his waist. Maybe he’d been napping. He slept a lot. The television they’d provided didn’t interest him because it was slaved to the TV in the front room, where the soldiers watched action flicks. Emily had talked to them about playing funny movies, for which Marcus thanked her, but he had even less taste for gross-out comedy like Adam Sandler or
South Park
episodes. Too bad. Emily would have stayed for hours just to have a chance to smile.

Marcus had one interest. The pulse. He read reports from everyone who provided them, not only the astrophysicists and engineers but also biologists like Emily, climatologists, geologists, NASA techs, and M.D.s.

They said he was weird. Emily agreed, although she also saw the sad, wounded man behind his calculated front. A lot of people didn’t. They envied the way he lived like a king with his private room, private cot, and private TV. They didn’t care that he was a prisoner. Everyone felt trapped, so they belittled him even as they kept coming back for advice.

Marcus was as smart as any three of them put together. He pointed out discrepancies in the astrophysicists’ data and argued with the climatologists. From the doctors and biologists, he asked for more. Their reports fascinated him. Meanwhile, he advised the team of astronomers at the Hoffman Square Kilometer Field and offered his own forecasts on the solar max. In every way, he seemed to be participating in their survival—but he was inconsolable.

The bunker was more than a hundred miles from the array. Three weeks ago, Bugle had been unable to capture Roell or Rebecca while leading a second rescue mission, which made Marcus bitter.

Marcus was correct in believing the soldiers hadn’t given many resources to this attempt. Drew had kept most of his team at the array, guarding their precious Osprey, unloading steel and cinder block to
reinforce the station, while Bugle led four men into the surrounding landscape. Roell hadn’t even topped their list. Bugle’s main objective had been the other ES2 astronomers like Steve, Kym, and Chuck. Bugle hadn’t been able to find them, either, but Emily didn’t think things would be different if Roell had been imprisoned with Marcus.

He would despise being trapped in here no matter what we did for him,
she thought.

“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?” Marcus asked. He was mild, biding his time. “Is it something we’re not supposed to know?”

Emily shook her head.

“If it was, who would find out?” he asked, indicating the walls.

Emily glanced at the door again, wondering how long she had before the soldiers came to question her. “There’s more graffiti than usual,” she said.

Marcus wrinkled his brow. He’d expected to hear the new development in her research.

“You know how I feel about cave art,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Nobody’s going to stop because Strickland said so.”

“This is different,” she said, uncertain how much to share with him as his mood changed like a lightbulb switching on. He became agitated.

“
Homo sapiens
developed their own strengths like the Neanderthals,” he said.

“Marcus—”

“They’re responding how they’re made to respond. Strickland can give as many orders as he wants.”

“Marcus, this is different,” Emily said in a firm voice.

He visibly struggled with himself. Then his smooth face returned. How much of his self-control was real? She worried it was a facade. Every glimpse of the commotion beneath his bland face made her wary.

Marcus thought the prehistoric totems and cave paintings found in Europe had been early
Homo sapiens
’ attempts to withstand the
interrupts. They had surely left drawings aboveground, too, during the long intervals between geomagnetic storms, but those had worn away in time, whereas some of their totems carved in horn still existed today.

Some anthropologists cited mystical purposes for
Homo sapiens
’ cave murals of reindeer and other large game. Chips in the walls were proof that men had practiced hurling spears into the drawings. Marcus agreed those people hoped their magic would bring them food, but he’d also taken this idea a step further. Had they carried their totems with them as reminders during the interrupts? Natural selection would have favored the hunters who increased their ability to train themselves, mimicking the Neanderthals’ focus.

Thousands of years later, prodigies like Emily and Marcus were the culmination of
Homo sapiens
’ talent for abstract visual representation—and yet both of them also had Neanderthal genes in their families.