Page 4 of His to Take

“Don’t be stupid, Rex! You’ve seen it out there! The snow, the ice, the constant darkness! Do you really think anything could survive out there, much less our old lives? Do you think John kidnapped us all after an earthquake and has been pretending the world is doomed ever since? I thought you were smarter than that!” She glared over at her guilty-looking son, and I had to admit, even I was a bit miffed about the childishness of his outburst.

He was 21 years old, he should have been more mature than that. To think something that awful. “How long have you thought that?”

It wasn’t a question, it was a demand, and he looked over at me. “I missed the game, Ann. We could have still had the game.”

“There was ash falling out of the sky, you idiot!” Stephan barked at his son. “Our house had just caved in around us! Did you think he orchestrated all of that?”

“No, but I do think he took advantage of the situation. I think he…”

John’s face, lined with age now, with dark circles under his eyes, was one of total shock and he interrupted Rex’s tirade. “I assure you, Rex, you and your family would not have been my first choice had I known what was coming.”

It was the first time any of them had ever really said hurtful things to each other, and now that Rex had started it, well, it appeared John wasn’t going to stand for it.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Rex snarled and leaned towards John menacingly.

“It means that you are all but useless, even in your human form, and the only real duty you perform is to stare out of the porthole to the world above all day. Your parents are extremely helpful, they perform a multitude of tasks, and your mother has even studied the medical books to keep us all healthy, but you all do have that tendency to turn into wolves every few weeks.”

Rex glared at John but didn’t say anything else. It was hard to argue against the truth, Ann thought with an angry glare at Rex. What had gotten into him? Did he really think her dad was some psycho like he claimed?

“I don’t think this was the direction any of us had planned to go.” Mary broke into the conversation and leaned forward to look at the family across from her. “Amanda, I respect your opinion, and if you say we wait and see what happens, I think that’s what we do.”

The tension left the room, just like that, and Ann wondered again at her mother’s ability to diffuse a situation. She always had that ability and Ann admired it. Especially in these cold, gray walls that surrounded them in the conference room. She decided to leave them to it and head back for the living room area and out to the outdoor patio. It wasn’t really outdoors, or a patio, but close enough.

Let them argue and call each other names if that’s what they wanted but she’d read one of the thousands of books that populated the library. Most were non-fiction, how-to books and textbooks, but there was some fiction. She’d spent a week counting them all around the second year they’d been below ground, and she’d learned there were 50,233 books in the library. It wasn’t a tiny room, after all, and it kept her busy.

There’d never been a lot for her to do down here. She’d help her mom wash clothes in the morning, since breakfast was only a matter of pouring hot water into a bag and leaving it to sit. The bags even came with biodegradable spoons, so there wasn’t any waste either. They’d put the bags in a collection bin, and her father would take them off somewhere eventually. They scrubbed clothes in buckets and hung them in one of the empty rooms on their floor to dry. Amanda would help when she wasn’t studying her medical textbooks and would always help her father with any science-related problems too.

If the ventilation fans weren’t as efficient, she’d go down with him and check the problem, or if they needed to mix new chemicals for the chemical toilets, then she was the one to do it. Her husband kept an inventory of everything and helped to keep the place tidy. The hardest job down there, really, was laundry, and it never took long.

Because of that, Ann spent a lot of time reading and daydreaming. She’d draw pictures from her life before that day, and of the life she wished she could have. Rex featured in most of them, which is why the notebooks were either locked up in a metal box in her room or with her.

Ann had matured over the years, but in many ways, she was still that girl full of hope. She knew that, and she knew her parents knew about her crush on Rex. It was hard to really hide it in such close quarters, but she tried. At the age of 20, she knew she should have been looking forward to a career and a life of her own. She’d planned to go to the closest university she could, and then to go into a career. But even now, she wasn’t sure which career she’d have chosen.

“Are you alright, Ann?” Her mother’s voice came in from the living room area and Ann turned a smile on her face that revealed two slightly crooked front teeth.

“I’m fine, Mom. Just… tired today. I didn’t sleep well.” It was only midday, by her father’s calculations, but she wanted to go to sleep and dream this day away already.

“I didn’t either, which is probably why I was so short with Rex.” She sighed and sat down beside her daughter, a grim expression on her face. “That boy just makes me so mad, sometimes.”

“You know he doesn’t mean any of it, Mom.” Ann sighed and looked away. “His entire life was ripped away before he could even live it.”

“We all had that happen to us, Ann,” her mother retorted but then winced. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap.”

“It’s alright, Mom. Today’s the anniversary, isn’t it? We’ve been down here five years now, and it’s just a bad day for all of us.”

“I know. It’s just…”

But a shout from the hallway interrupted whatever she might have said next.

“The sky is blue!” Her father’s voice shouted from the stairwell that led up to the first level.