Contain (3 page)

Jonah's dad is confident that the
scourge will long be over by then. Based on his calculations, based
on the fact that the other busload of survivors never arrived and
that the bunker was intended to support twice as many people, he
thinks we were only meant to stay in here for three or four years
total, which would be right about now. Jonah's even more sure that
the danger caused by the Flense has since passed, but most of the
rest of us are skeptical.

Jonah's strongest argument is that no
one has seen any Wraiths in any of the monitors for several months.
“They're all dead,” he tells us.

Mom and Harper and
Leah.

I give a corner of the closest pallet
an angry kick, and a bag breaks open and spills its precious grain
out in a tiny avalanche onto the floor.

“
Damn it!”

I reach down to try and stem the flow,
and the coolness of the fine rice grain spilling through my fingers
reminds me once more how warm I feel.

Or rather, it’s the air that’s
warm.

I glance over toward the
door with concern, wondering if the ventilation system is starting
to act up. I go over and stick my hand up closer to the grate and
it's not just warm, but hot.
Too
hot. I should call my father on the handset by the
door.

But I don't have to, because that's
when the fire alarm goes off.

I throw the clipboard to the floor and
slam through the door. Down the hallway to the stairs. The noise is
a thousand times louder out here. I bypass the lift. The first
thing Dad taught us is to avoid the elevator during
emergencies.

I've only climbed up a single flight
when Eddie Mancuso, our lead mechanic, flies around the next
landing and nearly plows into me. “Down!” he orders. He's wearing
nothing but his undies, having clearly been roused from his sleep.
“Malfunction in the furnace! Didn't you notice the
heat?”

Seth Abramson is right behind him, as
is Stephen Largent, both already dressed. Others are coming. I join
them, though I'm not sure what I can do. My thoughts are for Bren.
Her shift usually follows her dad's, so she's probably on watch
right now. What must she be thinking? Somebody should tell her
what's going on.

She must be going crazy wondering.
It's forbidden to leave the monitors unattended, no matter what,
unless it's a matter of life and death. “Can't take the chance one
of the infected gets through,” Dad always says. He refuses to call
them Wraiths, unlike everyone else. He also won't concede that
they're too dumb to figure out how to get past the security lock on
the doors. “And we don't want to miss seeing a survivor,” he
adds.

Like me, he still wants to believe
there might be people out there who somehow escaped the Flense. But
unlike me, he still believes the rest of our family is still
alive.

I'm soaking with sweat as we stampede
down the steps. The temperature quickly rises the lower we go.
Level Seven. Level Eight. The stairwell now feels like the kitchen
during mealtime in the summer.

Eddie's right. I should have checked
it out sooner. It'll be my fault if the problem is made worse
because of it.

A loud hissing fills my ears as we
exit onto Level Nine and sprint toward the boiler room door. The
air is thick with moisture, making it hard to breathe, to see.
Condensation drips down the walls, pools on the floor. I slip,
stumble, catch myself as others pass me.

“
Broken main!” Eddie yells.
He keys in the access code, then forces open the steel door. He's
immediately enveloped with steam. The overhead lights flicker and
go out. The fog glows red from the emergency beacon. “Must've fried
the thermostat!”

I open my mouth to shout at him to
stop, but he wades into the mist before I can move. The way it
swallows him up reminds me of the Wraiths. I freeze in panic, the
words dead on my lips as I envision them coming out to touch
us.

But then the image is torn from me.
There's a loud clang from inside the room and the hissing grows
into an angry roar. The fluorescent lights blink back on, one by
one, all in a line.

Eddie yelps once in surprise. His next
screams are in agony.

Someone rushes past me, slamming me
into the door jamb, shouting something about getting out of the
way. Then another person. I hear more shouting inside. I hear the
roar of their voices turning to screams of horror.

An instant later, they're pulling
Eddie out by his arms. Everything's bright red, so at first I think
he's covered in blood, that Wraiths have somehow gotten in and
started to eat him. But I quickly realize it's not what I think it
is. He wasn't attacked. His skin is burned, horribly so.

“
Is he dead?” I
ask.

Someone grabs my shirt and shakes me.
It's Stephen Largent, Eddie's assistant. He shouts in my face to
get Doc Cavanaugh. It feels like it takes forever before my brain
can reorder the words into something that makes sense.

I turn on my heels and run to find
her, even as I know it's already too late.

“Finn, it's not your fault.”

Bren combs her fingers through my hair
and tries to turn my face to look at her. But I feel absolutely
terrible about what happened downstairs.

Before I can stop myself,
I'm snapping at her that it
is
my fault.

She draws back, her lips pressed
tight. She's used to my moodiness and doesn't often let it get to
her, but I know it's no excuse for me to be mean.

“
I'm sorry,” I
mumble.

I swivel the chair away and
stare at the image on the center console. The view is the loading
bay doors, two stories down on Level Four. A while back, someone
stuck a piece of paper to a corner of the screen labeling it
The Welcome Mat
, though
it has been anything but welcoming.

Sometimes, because the image never
changes, I freak myself out believing that the camera is broken and
that what's on the screen isn't really happening outside, that the
true image is something trying to get in at us and I'm blind to it.
But if I stare at the picture long enough, I can see the shadows
slowly creeping along, changing shape and size, and I know
everything's working fine.

Night watch is the worst. At night,
there's only the security lights, and the shadows don't move at all
for hours on end.

I know every inch of that view by
heart, as well as the ones on the other two monitors. Every crack
in the pavement and walls, every weed growing through them, every
oil stain. Every faded blood stain. I see them all in my sleep. If
I had an iota of artistic talent and a lot of gray paint and a
little red, I could recreate them all from memory.

“
I mean it, Finn. You
didn't send Eddie into that room.”

“
I didn't stop him,
either,” I repeat.

“
He's a grown man. He knew
better.”

“
And I'm not? I
don't?”

Bren lets out a frustrated puff of air
and pulls further away from me. Already I miss her touch, the heat
of her body, the soft feel of it pressed against mine, and the room
suddenly feels a lot larger than it really is.

It's small, actually, barely fifteen
feet on each side, but it's made even more cramped by the jumble of
equipment along the back wall behind this centrally-positioned
table. At the same time, the lack of lighting makes it appear
deeper.

A sudden puff of cool air caresses my
face, drawing my attention toward the vent near the ceiling. “Looks
like they've got it fixed.”

“
And Doc'll get Eddie fixed
up, too.”

“
You didn't see him. It was
bad.”

I know I do this to her sometimes,
treat her more like a sister than a girlfriend. And she's an angel
to bear it. Sometimes I wonder if maybe she'd never even be with me
if we weren't stuck inside this place. It's not like there are many
options for us.

I reach over and grab her arm and
repeat my apology.

There are thirty-one people
in Bunker Eight, most of them older adults, a few younger kids.
Among the boys our age, there's Jonah, who's a year older than me
at nineteen. Bix, my best friend — well, if I'm being totally
honest with myself, my
only
friend — is a year younger. And the two
Rollins boys, Jacob and Jareth, thirteen and fourteen,
respectively.

On the other side, there's just Bren,
seventeen, and Hannah, who's a year younger. It's no secret that
Jonah favors Hannah, which is good for me. And everyone knows that
Hannah has a huge crush on Bix— everyone but Bix, it seems. I
figure that's why Jonah never cuts him any slack.

Most of the time, Bix just takes it.
He's too insecure to stand up to Jonah on his own. And his solution
when he's not alone is to try and joke his way out. That goes for
just about any uncomfortable situation. He'd probably make fun of
Hannah liking him if he had a clue about it.

Not that it makes any difference.
Hannah's dad is super protective of her. I doubt he'd let anyone
near his daughter as long as we're living in here.

Except now her father’s
lying in a bed in the med bay dying, so there's nothing stopping
Jonah from weaseling his way into her affections
.

“
You should be with
Hannah,” I tell Bren.

“
Bix is with
her.”

“
Oh?” I say, surprised.
“Bet she's happy about that.”

Bren frowns at me. “Stop it, Finn.
She's scared to death that her father's going to die.”

Because he is.

“
And Jonah?” I ask, despite
knowing I'm not doing myself any favors by bringing him up.
“Where's he?”

“
He's helping out with the
repair in the dungeon.”

That's what Bren calls Levels Nine and
Ten. She refuses to go any lower than the open area on Level Seven.
She insists the place is haunted, that she's heard voices and
crying down there, once when she helped my father find a tool or
something on Level Eight.

“
The senior members called
for a meeting once they've finished,” she says, glad to change the
subject. “Everyone's supposed to go.”

“
Not everyone,” I remind
her. I gesture at the screens. Someone has to watch
them.

“
Nobody blames you,” she
assures me. She takes a hold of my face again and tries to kiss me,
but I push her away.

“
Crowded rooms, remember? I
don't do well with a lot of people around me.”

“
That's not true. Maybe it
was at one time, but not anymore.”

I scowl. “Then why would my father
send me up here to relieve you? He was afraid I'd have some kind of
episode.”

She squeezes my arm hard, forcing me
to look at her. There's something in her eyes that catches my
attention, not frustration, but concern.

“
Your dad's not the one who
called the meeting.”

“
What do you
mean?”

“
Jack Resnick
did.”

My mouth pops open in
surprise.
Jonah's dad?
“Why? He's not in charge! I mean, okay, he's our chief
engineer, but if anyone is going to—” I choke on my anger and am
barely able to finish. “If anyone's going to speak for Eddie, it
should be Stephen Largent.”

“
I think that's what Jack
wants to talk about, Finn. Replacements.”

I don't say anything. I try to read
her face, but I don't like what I'm seeing. Jack talking about
replacements can only mean one thing.

“
It's not just the boiler
room or the vents, Finn. We've been having trouble with the lights,
too. There's . . . .” She sighs. “Things are
falling apart.”

“
And Dad’s been fixing
them.”

“
I'm just as worried as
everyone else. I mean, how much longer are we supposed to be in
here? How much longer will everything keep working? Eventually,
something's going to break and we won't be able to fix it. What
then?”

“
What are you
saying?”