Contain (2 page)

I lurch upright and gasp for air. My skin's covered in sweat, but
the wetness on my cheeks is from tears.

Dad stirs on his bedroll, just a few
feet away. “Finn?” he asks.

I turn away, embarrassed, and don't
answer. Eighteen-year-olds aren't supposed to cry in front of their
fathers, not in this world. Not in any world.

I reach for my threadbare jeans and
tee shirt in the darkness, blindly patting the floor next to me
until I find them. Blinded more by the vision still fresh in my
head, than by the inadequate band of light slipping in under the
door. The clothes are well worn and dingy. The shirt, an evacuation
center stock white tee, is a size too small and strains at the
seams as I pull it on. Used to be too big, but I've grown. The
jeans are donations. I'm lucky to have them.

“
Nightmare?” he asks. His
words are drunk with sleep. “Same one?”

“
I'm going out.” I don't
bother with shoes or socks. I only wear them when I absolutely have
to.

“
It's . . . .” He squints at the clock on
the wall. “It's not even four o'clock, Finn. Go back to
sleep.”

“
Food needs to be
inventoried. I'll get an early start.”

He grunts and settles back onto his
mat and murmurs something about it being too warm. He doesn't force
me to talk to him about my problems, for which I am currently
grateful, though there are times when I wish he would put forth a
little more effort, make it seem like he's interested in my life.
In me. Sometimes, he makes me feel more like of a nuisance than a
son.

I head down the empty hallway to the
stairs. I need to be alone to clear my head, and the mindless task
of inventorying helps. Plus, there's the solitude.

There are those who find the isolation
here hard to bear. Bix, for example. He thrives on social
interaction. For me, solitude has always been an elusive thing,
constantly sought, fragile when captured, easily lost. In the
crowded world that existed before the Flense, I was lucky to get it
whenever I could. Back then, I was the kind of kid who functioned
better on my own, away from others. I craved isolation. I needed
it.

Now the world is a much emptier place,
yet solitude seems even harder to find.

It's not that I'm antisocial. It's
just that before coming here I found dealing with people difficult.
The connections inside of my head weren't made properly. That's
what people said. Whatever. Now I have little choice in the
matter.

Of course, I take meals with others,
sit with Bix and Bren whenever I can. Bix'd be offended if I
didn't, though he's like the Energizer Bunny sometimes and keeps
going. It can get obnoxious at times, so I find myself zoning him
out a lot. He does make me laugh, though. I give him that.
Laughter's a rare thing to hear in this world.

Then there's Bren. I'd be lying if I
said I didn't treasure the few moments each day I get to spend with
her.

As I pass her door, I hear her
father's voice on the other side of it, so I know he's up. I wonder
if he pulled the overnight duty watching the security monitors. I
don't bother knocking.

Meals are pretty much the extent of my
routine social interactions these days. There are the usual hellos
in the hallway, of course, which are unavoidable. I try not to be
rude. Must be a functioning member of this community, even if that
community consists only of some thirty-odd individuals. The last
people left alive on the planet, infected or otherwise, at least if
some people are to be believed.

I'm not sure I do. There are nine
other bunkers like this one. There have to be other survivors in
them.

As for my nightly interrogation by
Dad, well, that could never be misconstrued for social interaction.
He rarely ever asks how I'm doing, rarely asks anything personal
about me. I think he's afraid I might actually answer
him.

Medication used to help me cope with
my fear of crowds, but it's been years since I've been able to take
anything. That's one of the many things they forgot to stock in
this place, before they sealed the doors shut behind us, a good
pharmacy. That and decent food, as Bix is constantly reminding us.
“I miss my peanut butter and amotta.”

“
What’s amotta?” one of the
Rollins twins obliges.

“
I don’t know,” Bix
responds, not skipping a beat. “What’s amotta with you?”

He also misses his
entertainment.

“
People'd be a heckuva lot
more pleasant if we just had something fun to do. Just give me a
decent video library, that’s all I ask. And something modest to
watch them on. An eighty-inch hi-def screen.”

“
Video library?” Bren
teases. “You mean porn.”

“
Hey, I gots my needs. They
must be satisfied.”

“
Satisfied how?” she
challenges. Then almost immediately regrets doing so. “Ewww! Gross!
Don't answer that!”

He doesn't deny what she's implying.
“Can I help it if I'm a hot-blooded teen-aged Lothario with a lot
of pent up—?”

“
Hormones?”

“
I was going to say
frustration.”

“
Just as bad,” she
quips.

“
Lothario my ass!” I snort.
“You're a horny perv.”

“
With a bad haircut,” Bren
adds, piling on.

“
Guilty as
charged.”

“
And a terrible
complexion,” she continues, and they both laugh.

It makes me uncomfortable that she can
joke around with my best friend like that.

“
That's cold, dude,” he
tells her, when he sobers up. He turns to me. “You gonna let your
girl diss your homie like that?”

I roll my eyes.

“
Anyway, it's not my fault.
It's the constant darkness in here. Zits flourish in artificial
light.”

“
Then why don't
we
all have zits?” Bren
challenges.

“
Because you and the
Finn-meister are freaks of nature.”

It's true— the part about us being
acne-free, I mean. Mine cleared up sometime after I turned sixteen.
And Bren has never had a pimple as long as I've known
her.

“
Must be another side
effect of your, ahem, frustration release,” I say.

Bren nearly spits out her condensed
milk.

Usually, by this point, Bix'll leave
the conversation in mock disgust or change the subject. Or he'll
threaten to deny us access to the only music in this place, which
is his father's guitar. Unless you count his singing in the
shower.

Yeah, we've got a guitar. Go figure.
But practically no meds except for the emergency ones Doc Cavanaugh
has in the supplied med kit downstairs on Level Five. The
organizers really could've done a much better job planning for our
needs. No antibiotics or videos. No internet or computers. No
peanut butter or takeout pizza.

All the things we took for granted
before the outbreak.

Before the
Flense.

Just food with a fifty-year
shelf-life, water, and power. Plus the gift of each others' company
and all the time in the world.

And that's why I value my
solitude.

I descend to Level Six, exit the
stairwell, and slip silently over the metal grating. Levels Five
through Seven share a three-story open bay, so noises have a
tendency to carry between floors in a way that has always made me
feel exposed, like I'm never alone.

I punch in the code on the keypad for
the food storage room and the locking mechanism clicks as it
releases, granting me access. The clipboard hangs just inside.
Counting cans and bags and boxes is mind-numbing work, but it
quiets my thoughts, which keeps the bad memories at bay. And the
terrifying images they invariably resurrect.

I'm only a few minutes into the count
when a bead of sweat drips from my forehead and splatters onto the
paper. The pencil lead smears when I wipe it away. A second bead
tickles my cheek, pulling me out of my zone.

It troubles me that I'm warm. It's
supposed to be cool down here, to help keep the stores from going
bad. My first thought is that I'm running a slight fever. So, of
course, my natural inclination is to deny it.

Doc says we're to report any illnesses
immediately, not that there have been any. We've all been lucky,
being as healthy as we have been. Early on, we all agreed that
anyone who starts to show any symptoms of illness, no matter how
minor, is supposed to place themselves into quarantine, away from
anyone else, just in case it's the Flense.

But at this point, after three years
of total isolation and absolutely no contact with the outside
world, how could it be possible to contract the deadly
disease?

I push the thought away. I'm just
tired. Or anxious. I wipe away another line of sweat on my neck and
resume the inventorying.

Canned soups and vegetables. Canned
meats and stews and soups. Dehydrated meats. Nuts. Dried berries.
Tasteless protein bars. All stacked neatly from one end of the room
to the next.

I tick each item off on my list. As
they should, the numbers exactly mirror what they were last week,
since Hannah hasn't been down to request that I transfer anything
up into the working larder on Level One.

To be honest, nothing really ever
changes very quickly, if at all. Not inside these walls. One day
slips seamlessly into another. The concept of morning and evening
have become nearly meaningless. There are no weekends, no weekdays.
There's a calendar on the wall in the common room where we
sometimes eat, and it's Maria Caprio's job to keep it current, but
I can't remember the last time I even looked at it.

If we want to know the time, we can
just check the clocks that are in every single one of our living
quarters. If we want to know if the sun is out, we can check the
security monitors in the watch room. Or the one in the wall by the
loading bay door on Level Four. There's also the windows in the
keeper station at the end of the corridor on this level.

But other than the hour or so a day
most of us are required to spend watching the monitors for
survivors, it's pretty rare that any of us will ever voluntarily
seek out those places. The horrors that played out for months
outside the bunker abolished any curiosity of the outside world for
good. The habit of not looking, of not being reminded of the
dangers and how close we came to becoming victims ourselves, has
become too deeply ingrained. This is our life now. Outside isn't
real.

I know that's not true, but that's how
it feels. Nothing there ever changes, either. After three years of
monitoring the cameras, not once has there been a single survivor.
Not in all the hundreds of hours I or anyone else has spent
dutifully watching for them.

Lots of the infected,
though.

Like Mom and Harper and
Leah.

“
Cornmeal,” I bark, as if I
can startle the unbidden memory of their faces away from my mind
with my voice. The word comes out as a croak, bounces off the
concrete walls and ceiling.

I clear my throat, hating the way it
distorts down here in this place. And in the spaces between echoes,
I become aware once more of the dull thud of the hydroelectric
turbines. You can hear them everywhere in the bunker, no matter how
far or how deep you go. The sound infects my sleep, my dreams,
infusing all with a sense of foreboding that I'll wake one day to
find them absent, that the engines of our survival have
stopped.

As if an augur of my fears, the dim
lights flicker, taunting me, reminding me that it could all end in
the blink of an eye.

Dad insists that the flickering is
nothing to worry about, despite it happening more and more often
lately, it seems. But I've seen the doubt in his eyes. I don't
think he believes himself.

The massive generators, which we lack
either the means or the skills to repair should they ever fail, are
the reason we're able to stay inside here. If for some reason they
ever stopped, we'd be totally screwed.

“
Rice.”

Tick.

Got to stop thinking such
thoughts.

“
Barley.”

Tick.

Just need to concentrate.

Tick.

“
Nine pallets,” I say
aloud. “Nine times ninety-eight cans per. Eight hundred and
eighty-two canisters.”

There's little satisfaction in knowing
that it's the exact same number as last week's inventory. The last
time a pallet of oats was cracked open was four months
ago.

It's Jonah's job to maintain the
larder stores. He loves lording it over me that he gets to tell me
when to transfer another pallet. He never helps move anything, so
it always falls to me. Thankfully, Hannah has been a blessing and
helps whenever she can.

I know it'll be awhile before he needs
more oatmeal, another two months at least. And based on past usage
we've got enough to feed us for another three years yet.

The thought of that timeframe
terrifies me, not because of how far away that is, but because of
how quickly the last three have passed. Already more than halfway
through. I don't relish the thought of leaving.