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“It’s a bunker,” he says. “Designed for a time when nuclear winter threatened the world at large. The supplies here are still good, and we will be safe.”
It’s a hole in the ground.
He directed me off the main road before we reached Point Pleasant, and from there we spent two hours navigating various backroads and trails rising over wooded ridges and trundling over old bridges until we made a final turn through an old farm gate and stopped in a barn.
I thought the barn was supposed to be the place we were staying, and I wasn’t pleased about that. But then he swept aside the old straw, revealing an old rust-marked silver lid. It looked like another piece of barn garbage until he picked it up from the edge, revealing this hole in the ground.
“I’m not going into the hole in the ground.”
“There are stairs,” he says. “This is the most secure place I can think of. It was devised to allow a family of five to survive for more than twenty years.”
To me it just looks like a dark hole, as I said, in the ground. Some people might not find this quite as remarkable as I do, but that black circle of what seems to me to be perhaps endless depth is actively repelling me.
“I think I might be claustrophobic.”
“I think you might be disobedient.”
“You can call it disobedient if you like, but I’m not going… hey Why are you taking your clothes off?”
He’s removing his jacket and his shirt, unveiling his other arms. It must suck to have to hide himself that way. I can only imagine how uncomfortable it is to have his arms stuck against his sides all day long. The sight of his bare chest and many arms spurs me to a visceral excitement. He’s so damn distracting, especially that deep red flash of skin that runs down the center of his chest. It’s a warning to all, and it should be a warning to me.
Order reaches for me and puts his hands on me. I thought his intention was to comfort me, but then he begins to spin his silk again from all six hands, and within seconds I am wrapped up in a limb-restraining grip by his silk.
“Hey! Don’t you fucking dare! Hey!”
Order hefts me up and over his shoulder and carries me and Obigor down into the hole. A light flicks on as we reach the bottom of the staircase, and the interior is revealed. It’s a house of the future, as imagined by the designers of the 1950’s. Clean lines and soft curves, teal furniture and deep pile burnt orange carpeting. It’s actually very cool, much to my surprise.
“Welcome!” A cheerful voice emanates from the wall, where a green and black DOS looking panel has come to life. “You are safe from the slings and arrows of the outside world; no matter what calamities have befallen civilization, you are safe. I detect one hero, one woman, and one small pet. Is that correct?”
“Yes,” Order says. “That’s correct.”
“Enter the nature of the emergency that has brought you to this sanctuary, hero.”
“Terminate welcome program,” Order says impatiently.
“Welcome program terminated. Vault sealed for minimum safe period of thirty days.”
“Wait. What?” I have been seething silently up until this point, but thirty days is way too many days.
“No,” Order says. “That’s not… that’s not right. Dammit.”
He puts me down on a nearby sofa and goes to mess with the terminal, but the terminal has gone black. I am left lying awkwardly on the couch while Order uses all six hands to try to wake the machine back up.
“Are we stuck down here for a fucking month?”
“Don’t worry,” Order says. “We’re not stuck.”
“So we can leave?”
“Not at this precise moment, but…”
“Why did it call you ‘hero’? What are you a hero of?”
Order sighs as he turns to me. “I wanted to find the others before explaining my origins to you.”
“You wanted to do almost anything else you could think of before explaining your origins to me. Holy fucking procrastination, batman. At this point I’m starting to not give a shit where you came from, or what you’re made of. Let me out of this silk.”
“You’re quite petulant, aren’t you,” he muses.
