Contain (12 page)

At the end of a very short hallway is
the main chamber, maybe a hundred and twenty feet long and thirty
wide. At the bottom, roughly thirty or forty feet down, is a large
catchment basin, usually containing a standing pool of oily,
smelly, stagnant water, seepage into the dam through the walls and
from the bedrock underneath. A half dozen sump pumps automatically
remove it.

The chamber is normally unlit to
prevent mold growth, and the lights are on sensors which always
seem reluctant to turn on, yet are quick to turn off. If you're
inside and you don't move for more than thirty seconds, they'll
pitch you into total darkness.

About a year after our arrival, one of
the Rollins boys happened to figure out the access code, and for a
couple days the kids would dare each other to come down and see who
could spend the longest amount of time in the dark alone. Bren's
father found out soon enough and had a fit, and my dad had to tell
everyone that Level Ten was off limits. “It's too dangerous,” he
told us. “Someone could get seriously hurt or worse falling off the
catwalk and landing on one of the pumps.”

But injury and death
weren't the worst things we could imagine. The worst was surviving
the fall into that black muck, to be consumed by whatever monster
lived in it. The stink was so bad, so
organic
, that it wasn't hard to
imagine that something actually did inhabit the darkness, and that
we were smelling its waste and the rotting flesh of the
construction workers it had caught but never eaten.

Dad's explanation for the smell was
quite a bit more mundane. He suggested that there might be a leak
in one of the sewage lines and our waste was being diverted into
the pools below. The possibility of touching someone's poop
discouraged further antics much more than the threat of
injury.

We all knew that it was Bren who had
told her father what we were doing down here. She was the one who
first started the rumor that something was off about the place. To
this day she insists she'd heard the disembodied voices of the
rumored dead, pleading to be let free. No one else has ever heard
them, or at least is willing to admit it. But once, during an
unusually hard rain that was flooding the loading ramp on Level
Four, I'd gone down to help my father check on the pumps, and over
their hard mechanical rumble I thought I'd heard crying.

Dad humored me by checking around,
even opening the small panel of the heavy steel door on the
opposite end of the chamber, though he quickly shut it with a
gagging cough. The fact that the door required a physical key
rather than a code led him to conclude that it was leftover from
when the dam was being built. In any case, I was glad he couldn't
open it. I didn't want to know what might be on the other
side.

“
You probably just heard
the wind,” he assured me, as we concluded our inspection and were
satisfied that the sumps were keeping up with the leakage. “You
never know how sound might travel through concrete and
rock.”

Mister Abramson posted a sign on the
door threatening punishment. It was still attached during that
visit, but it's since disappeared.

I key in the code, then open the door,
bracing myself with an arm pressed against my nose and mouth. The
overhead lights switch silently on, followed a split second later
by the lights mounted in the walkway. They illuminate the catwalk
but aren't strong enough to penetrate very far into the darkness
below.

From the distant rumble, an angry,
gravelly sound, I know that at least one of the pumps is
running.

The inspection proceeds quicker than I
expect it to, though it's still longer than I'd prefer.

On the near side of the chamber,
there's a broad platform surrounded by a gated railing that
provides access to a ladder down to the pumps. The platform is
empty save for a control booth and an empty wooden crate which was
left here presumably by someone long since dead. There's no sign
that any of the bunker inhabitants has been here in a
while.

I've never been down the ladder, and
without a flashlight handy, I don't relish the idea. But I swing
the gate open and peer out into the darkness until I begin to
discern the shapes of the lower ledge and pumps. Moving slowly,
passing hand over hand and pausing only long enough to suck in
another breath through the thin fabric of my shirt, I descend. Slow
enough so that my eyes are able to adjust to the increasing
gloom.

Finally, my foot finds the rough
cement below and I step gingerly out onto the unprotected ledge.
The pumps loom before me in a perfect line. They look like
monstrous mechanical incubators. Three are visible from where I
stand, but I know there are at least as many more beyond, hidden by
a massive concrete column.

I suck in another breath, this time
forgetting to use my shirt, and I find the result tolerable, though
I know it's only because I'm getting used to the smell. I can feel
it coating the back of my throat.

The surface of the ledge is slick,
coated by a layer of oily muck, and I'm glad for the shoes I
decided to put on before coming down. Carefully, I step out, but my
foot immediately slips out from under me and I very nearly fall. If
I hadn't still been holding on to the ladder, I would've gone over
the edge and into the water.

“
This is insane,” I mutter.
“Nobody’d hide food down here.”

I'm convinced enough by the absence of
marks in the slime other than those from my own feet that I abort
the search. I turn back and head up the ladder, scraping my shoes
on the rungs as I go.

After confirming there is no food
being stashed away on the other end of the upper platform, I pause
for a moment at the steel door, as if daring it to make a sound.
But other than the distant rumble of the turbines and the
intermittent grind of the sump pumps below, there is nothing to
hear.

I'm happy when I can lock the door
behind me and proceed to Level Nine.

* * *

It's shortly after one o'clock in the afternoon by the time I reach
Level Two. My stomach is growling, and hunger is sapping my
strength. But I should be able to finish this floor in less than
fifteen minutes, as it only consists of a few empty rooms, the main
control room, which I can't get into anyway, and the watch room
with the monitors.

It's highly unlikely that anyone would
stash anything in the watch room, both because it's fairly small
and already crowded with unused equipment, but also because it's
the one room that nearly everyone in the bunker has daily access
to. Only the Largent kids, Sammy and Mia, and the Rollins boys,
Jacob and Jareth, are excluded from monitor duty. But though it may
be a crappy place to hide anything, I'm obligated to check it, if
only because I know my father will question me about my
thoroughness. It's just not worth lying about.

But when I reach the room, I see by
the schedule on the wall that Bren's inside. Her shift will end in
twenty minutes, when my father takes over. I decide to come back
then.

Except that the door opens before I
can move on.

“
Oh.” Bren gives me a
sheepish look. “I thought I heard someone out here. I thought it
might be your father coming early.”

“
I was just checking the
schedule,” I tell her, and step away.

“
Can you stay and talk for
a moment?”

“
You're on watch. I don't
want to bother you. You know the rules.”

“
Please, Finn. Just for a
couple minutes. I know you're angry with me, but I can explain
about this morning.”

“
No need,” I tell her.
“Seems pretty clear to me.”

“
Finn. It's not what you
think.”

Not what I
think?

I picture Eddie and the
unnatural army of microscopic workers in his blood. I think about
the strange way Dad's been acting lately, the inadequacy of his
concern about the upcoming vote, and his dismissal of Stephen's
suspicions that someone is sabotaging things inside the bunker. I
think about the missing food. And suddenly it seems like
nothing
is what I think
anymore.

“
Please, Finn.”

“
Better keep an eye on
those monitors. Wouldn't want you to miss anything.”

She frowns at me. “There's nothing out
there, Finn. There never is.”

“
Yeah, I know. Jonah keeps
reminding us all of that. Looks like he's got you convinced that
the Wraiths are all dead and that the Flense is gone and we should
all just leave. Does your dad know?”

“
I don't
want
to leave, Finn! But
I also don't want to stay here forever. There's a whole world out
there. I  I don't think I could bear living in here another
three years.”

“
Well, you won't have to,”
I say, thinking again about our food shortage.

“
What do you
mean?”

“
Nothing. Forget
it.”

She puts a hand on my arm and pulls me
close. I resist, though not very hard. She has this effect on me,
being able to tear down my barriers with a single touch, and for
just a moment the irony of that strikes me, how a single touch can
be so destructive, yet so irresistible.

“
Just for a minute,” she
purrs. And she draws me into the watch room where no one can see
us.

The door shuts, and even though I know
we're breaking the rules, I suddenly don't care. Right now, all I
want is her. All I want is to feel the heat of her body on my skin,
to smell the scent of her hair. I close my eyes and inhale, and I'm
reminded of warm straw in the sunlight, and it summons a distant
memory from long ago, of childhood laughter and roasted pumpkin
seeds and apple cider.

“
Your choice,” she
whispers. Her breath burns my cheek, whisks away the memory. “Stay
or go.”

I don't answer. I want to stay. She
knows how much I want to, wrapped up in her arms like
this.

“
I'll go wherever you want
to go,” she tells me. “Whether it’s here or somewhere
else.”

“
Your parents may have a
thing or two to say about that.”

But I find myself relaxing against
her. She lifts her chin and her lips caress mine, sending a shiver
through my body, and I open my mouth. My nose fills with her scent,
musky and laden with desire. I could so easily forget everything,
if only—

My stomach lets out a horrendous
gurgle, and the moment is completely blown.

When the laughter finally fades from
our bodies, I tell her that I need to share something.

She looks up at me, and blinks those
beautiful brown eyes at me and waits.

“
Jonah and his dad don't
have our best interests at heart, Bren. In fact, I think they may
be making things worse . . . on purpose.”

“
Jonah wouldn't do
that.”

“
Stop taking his
side!”

“
I'm not taking anybody's
side! Finn, maybe you don't see it because
you . . . .” Her words falter, and it's not
hard for me to know exactly what she's thinking.

“
Because I prefer to be
alone most of the time?” I ask.

She winces, but presses on.
“People are getting restless—
have
been
getting restless for a while now. What
are we doing here anymore?”

“
Well, for one thing, we're
surviving. For another, we're trying to learn about the
Flense.”

“
How, Finn? How can you
study something you can't even touch? Tell me, Finn, what have we
learned about the Flense in the three years that we've been trapped
in here?”

“
A lot! We know how the
Wraiths act, how they behave.”

“
And there aren't any
Wraiths out there anymore!”

I push her away and grab my head. My
thoughts are too muddled. Thankfully, she doesn't keep pushing. She
knows I'll just shut down if she does.

But then I hear voices outside in the
hallway, and one of them is my father's. The other one belongs to
Seth Abramson.

“
Crap,” I say. We've
already been warned about being alone together. Bren's dad has made
it clear to me he won't tolerate it. And if we're found together
here in the watch room, it'll be doubly worse.

“
Hide,” Bren
whispers.

“
What? I can't—”

“
I'll think of something.
I’ll send them away. Hurry!”

She pushes me behind the table and
over to a stack of wooden crates in a dark back corner.

I resist. “Dad's got next
watch!”

“
Not discussing this right
now!” she hisses at me, and forces me against the wall.
“Please!”

She steps away and makes it back to
the monitors just as the door beeps open.

From the darkness, I hear her greet my
father and ask if everything's okay. Her voice quavers a little,
but it seems he doesn't notice. My heart pounds against my ribs. “I
don't mind doing a second shift, Mister Bolles, if you're
busy.”

I hear them exchange a few words,
though my father's voice is too soft for me to hear clearly. I
think he might be asking about the monitors. Feet shuffle, and the
chair's castors rolling over the cement floor are like distant
thunder. The cushion squeaks, so I know someone has sat down on it.
Then light floods into the watch room as the door opens once more.
A moment later, it clicks shut and the darkness returns.