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“It’s not shut anymore,” I said. “And look.” There was a muddy footprint with a waffle tread on the concrete pad in front of the door.
“Shit,” Lily said. She cupped her hands around her mouth. “Liam! Abby!”
The only reply was the dull plink of water in the dim interior.
Lily swore again and grabbed her radio. “Kenny, they’re in the bunker. I’m going to go down there to check it out.” She looked at me. “The intern’s coming back your way.”
“I’m coming with you,” I said. She took her thumb off the button. We squared up with glares and tight jaws. She was treating me like a child, but she was the one stumbling into things she didn’t understand. My anger was a hot coal and I clenched my hands tight around it, savoring the burn. “You’re not my boss and you’re not my parent. You don’t get to tell me what to do.”
“I outrank you or whatever,” Lily said. Twenty-three wasn’t much older than eighteen, though. We glared at each other, and Lily was the one who broke. “Update. Intern’s coming with me,”Lily said into the radio. “If you don’t hear from us in ten minutes, radio the LARC for some help. Over.” She cast me one last glare. “Stay close and stay behind me. If a wall collapsed on them or something, it might not be safe for us either.”
I didn’t tell her that a collapsed wall was the least of our worries.
She hadn’t seemed to notice that Kenny never replied. I let her take the lead. She unclipped a flashlight from her well-stocked belt as she did. All the LARC employees carried them, just in case the mist rolled in unexpectedly. It was easier to find each other when you had beacons on hand. I hadn’t brought mine, though. It was in one of the dry bags on the beach. Stupid.
Lily swept the light over the interior cautiously. Concrete, and lots of it, covered in water stains and black mold. The passage led straight back with doors to either side. The end of the passage was heaped with junk. The door to the right was ajar but couldn’t be opened any further. Rusted hinges and a pile of detritus on the other side kept it too narrow for even a kid to squeeze through. The door on the left, though, was off its hinges, lying on the damp floor.
“How big is this place?” I asked.
“It can’t be that big,” Lily said. “No more than a few rooms. They must not be in here.”
“We need to check,” I insisted.
She was shaking her head, and she made a reluctant sound in the back of her throat. I knew what she was feeling because I felt it too. Like the rush of beetles away from a light. A skittering and chittering in the air that you couldn’t hear but you could feel—something here, somethingwrong, but nothing that you could put words to.
To her credit, she gritted her teeth and walked farther in. Our steps had an odd, crumpled quality to them, as if the walls were drinking in the sound. Beyond the downed door was a low-ceilinged room. Ancient tables and chairs moldered, some knocked over, others sagging in place. Another door stood open at the end of the room, leading to a storage closet. Near it, a metal staircase led downward.
“They must have gone down,” I said. I stepped toward the stairs, but that insect-crawling feeling intensified until I could swear I should have seen them scurrying over my limbs.
“We shouldn’t be here,” Lily said.
“It’s okay. Give me the flashlight. I’ll go.”
For a moment, she seemed tempted. Then she muttered, “You’re just a kid.” She took a deep breath and stalked past me. I followed.
Lily shone the flashlight down the stairwell. The steps were rusted. They didn’t look very safe, but we were going to have to go down. Because there was another footprint at the top of the stairs, right where we were standing. The same waffle print as the one out front. Except this one wasn’t made of mud. It was blood. Blood was smeared on the wall leading down, too, and glistened on the rusting metal steps.
“We should go get help,” Lily said.
A bang reverberated through the bunker as the door to the outside slammedshut.
PART THREE
CERTAIN FATHOMS IN THEEARTH
VIDEO EVIDENCE
Recorded by Abigail Ryder
JUNE 30, 2018, 8:16 AM
The camera switches on, focusing on the hillside and the empty, cloudless sky.It pans around slowly until it reaches Liam Kapoor.
LIAM: So. Care to take a romantic jaunt into the bowels of the earth?
ABBY: Let’s agree, right now, that we are not going to try to keep up that ridiculous lie when we don’t absolutely have to.
LIAM: If it makes you feel any better, I regret it deeply.
