Buried.2015.03.04 Read online

  This moment, though… it was all. It was nothing. Christopher could not fully understand it. Words would not do it justice. Feelings go beyond the limits of human vocabulary.

  They had lost so many. Dorcas. Derek. Ken. All gone because they had dared the greatest risk: caring for others more than for themselves. Refusing to abandon friends and family when they could have, time after time.

  But they were still together, those that remained. They would not flee each other's sides.

  Family was gone.

  Family remained.

  Most things had changed.

  Some things would remain the same.

  They held each other and cried. And when the tears stopped they still held one another. Silence that started heavy with grief and then became lighter with memory and with relief at the luxury of being able to hold one another; at being able to stand still and simply breathe for the first time since everything fell down.

  Mo spoke. "I am glad."

  Christopher turned. He could barely see the big Māori, his vision still blurred by tears only half-dried. He blinked and was glad to realize that the hunter was sitting up. Face whiter than it had been, stark behind the dark tattoos, but the man was smiling. He had a hand to his shoulder, the palm so big it easily covered the bandages on both bullet wounds. One swat with that thing would probably fell a bear.

  "Glad of what?" Buck said – ever willing to look a gift horse in the mouth. Even one provided by a dude tough enough to bring down a tank with a bubble pipe and an angry stare.

  Mo didn't lose his smile. "I am glad that I have found good people. That I have brought them home."

  Christopher smiled back at the man's big grin. But he also felt a twinge of fear. The words seemed nice, but it was also the kind of thing that the serial killer said right before asking hapless hitchhikers "to dinner" and then proceeding to eat their faces.

  "Why did you invite us in?" said Buck. Apparently he was thinking along similar lines. And again Christopher had to wonder if he was turning into a younger version of his crotchety, irritable friend.

  Christopher had thought that Māori tattoos were designed to make the wearer look ferocious, animalistic. But apparently they served more to highlight a person's facial features, whatever they were, because when Mo smiled the curls seemed to turn his lips up higher than was possible. Now they twisted around in lines that made a near-caricature of confusion. "I don't understand," said Mo. "I brought you here because you needed it."

  Christopher was a bit dismayed to hear how suspicious his voice now sounded. "I thought survivalists wanted to survive alone."

  Now the tattoos grew rigid, and he worried he had said something – perhaps the truth? – that would kill them all.

  13

  The look on Mo's face only lasted an instant. Barely a flicker. Enough to show that there was another man underneath the good-natured exterior. A man who could shoot a special forces attacker, could wound him and put him down at long range in a torrential downpour, even though wounded himself.

  And all without making a sound. Let's not forget that freaky little fact.

  Then the ferocious visage disappeared. The smile came back. "Oh, I understand. My eyes were blind, but now I see." He smiled a bit wider, as though at some private joke. "I did not build this to keep people out." He gestured with his left arm, the right hanging at his side, still coated in blood. The motion took in whole room. "I built it to give others a place. A home when the bad times came."

  "How did you know they would?" said Buck.

  "They always do."

  Buck finally nodded, as though in this pessimistic statement he had finally found something he understood.

  "You were looking for us?" said Maggie. She wiped her eyes. Her voice, Christopher was relieved to hear, sounded normal. Shaky, but back to the woman he had grown used to over the last days.

  "Not you, but people like you. People who would need help."

  "Are you a superhero?"

  That was Hope. She looked at the huge man behind theblood-spattered poker table, evidently not understanding all that was going on, all that had happened. But knowing that this man had done something for them.

  "Supergirl!" said Lizzy. At least, Christopher was pretty sure that was what she said. It could have been "Soupy gills," too.

  The two-year-old wiggled in the undersized baby carrier that bound her to her mother. "Off, down, off!" she shouted. Maggie started loosening the straps on the Baby Bjorn.

  Christopher couldn't help but smile at that. The toddler sounded like a two-year-old. Bossy, mercurial, a pain.

  Normal.

  Sally purred and resumed cleaning himself. Whatever had happened to the girls, it seemed to be loosening its hold here.

  "Well, are you?" demanded Hope. "You have those magic drawings all over you. So are you?"

  Mo's smile disappeared. He stood. His right arm dangled, his face whitened. But he walked over to the girl and knelt in front of her. He held out a huge, callused hand. She took it.

  "I am no superhero, te tamahine. If I were such a thing, I would have saved all of you."

  They remained like that a long time. Maggie inhaled, that gasping breath. Christopher worried she was going to start crying again. She didn't. She put Hope down and the two-year-old immediately kicked Sally in the side. "Sally play!" Lizzy shouted. Sally looked at the toddler with the longsuffering that only a predator can bestow, then resumed preening himself.

  Maggie put a hand on Mo's good shoulder. "Thank you," she said. "You saved my children."

  Mo nodded. He squeezed Hope's hand, then switched his gaze to Maggie. "I meant what I said before. I will return for him. Bravery deserves honor, and those who die like the shark will not be abandoned like the octopus."

  Christopher didn't understand what the hell that meant, but Maggie nodded like it made perfect sense to her. Whether it actually did or not he had no way of telling. And it didn't really matter, he supposed. What mattered was that they had found a friend.

  Mo stood. "Come," he said. "I will show you your home."

  14

  "Isn't this our home?" said Buck, gesturing at the room.

  Christopher nodded, confused. What kind of tour did Mo think he was going to provide?

  But Mo laughed like the big man had said something hilarious. He went to the hatch next to the shelving from which he had removed the first aid kit. Then he apparently changed his mind. Turned back to the poker table, packed up the first aid kit, and returned it to its spot.

  "We will clean the rest later," he said. His tone of voice was reassuring, as though he worried that the group would fret about the mess. As though to say, "I know that zombies have taken over, that people are dying, but don't fret, cleaning time is still scheduled for six p.m."

  This guy likes everything in its place.

  It was a reassuring thought. They had stumbled into a pocket of… what? Sanity might be too strong a word, considering they were in an underground tube outfitted like a bachelor pad. But order, yes.

  Order. And that was a welcome change.

  Their host turned back to the hatch.

  "Do you really go by Mo?" said Buck.

  "Yes," said the hunter. He was the same size as Buck, probably about the same age, too. Christopher wondered who was stronger. Buck was an ex-contractor, thick around the middle but with arms and legs strong from years of hard labor. But the newcomer was sturdy and tough as a worn saddle.

  Christopher decided not to get in the middle if the two ever started swinging at each other.

  "So… Mo the Māori?" said Buck. He giggled. The kind of sound you might make if suddenly pulled out of a shark tank full of famished great whites.

  Mo nodded. "Just so," he said. He did not sound offended, or even aware of the joke.

  Hope giggled as well. Their benefactor turned the wheel in the center of the hatch, then the hunter turned to her, and Christopher saw the broad smile that already rested on his face. "Perhaps with such a
name I may one day become a superhero, te tamahine?"

  Hope nodded. The wheel clicked and stopped spinning. Mo the Māori pulled the hatch open. He stepped through the hatchway, though he had to duck to do so, and very nearly had to turn sideways because his shoulders were so broad.

  Buck followed the hunter through, and Christopher heard his friend say, "This is it?"

  "Patience, takatāpui."

  "Yeah, patience, poopy," said Christopher as he followed through the hatchway. Though once through the portal he had to admit he understood Buck's reaction.

  "Shut up, Christopher."

  "Make me, poopy."

  "That's not what he said!"

  "It's what I heard." A borderline evil grin tugged at Christopher's lips. "Poopy." He was taking his life in his hands, but it felt good. A return to the existence he once enjoyed, when life was full of fast cars, parties, and witty one-liners. Now what was it? Death, running.

  And family. For the first time, a group of people that loved him, that he knew would not leave him.

  Maybe it was a good trade.

  Buck took a looming step toward him. Christopher started to reconsider the wisdom of his zingers.

  "Boys, stop it. Or I'll turn the bomb shelter around and we'll go home." Maggie stepped through the hatchway, the girls in tow. Another good sign that she was already resuming her den mother role in the group. She sounded thin, her voice a fraying tissue. Even the joke was delivered in a near-monotone. But she was stepping back into life. She had to. None of them could take the time they needed to grieve, to heal. The world wouldn't allow them that, any of them – but least of all the mother among them.

  Baby steps, Maggie. Baby steps are good.

  Christopher exhaled a breath he hadn't known he was holding; wondered if he had been holding it since Ken died. Probably.

  They had all lost friends. Family. But they had to go on. Because they still had friends and family. Only the already-dead could lie down and just give up.

  Though in light of recent events, he supposed that not even the dead were always afforded that luxury.

  It's a get-up-and-go world for everyone, living or dead.

  Sally apparently did not deign to see whatever lay on the other side of the thick metal door. He remained in the bachelor pad portion of the underground installation.

  As for the rest of them… after stepping through the hatchway they found themselves in what amounted to a short tube full of nothing. Just a cylinder that ended in a solid concrete wall covered in metal piping.

  "So this is home?" said Hope.

  "Yucky," said Lizzy.

  "No, Lizzy," said Christopher. "It's pronounced, Poopy."

  Buck growled again, and Christopher knew this was it: death would come at the hands of his maybe-best friend in this little tube fifty feet underground.

  He laughed. It seemed the right thing to do.

  15

  "Patience," said Mo with a laugh that very nearly matched Christopher's. He was already at the far wall, a forbidding expanse of gray concrete broken only by lines of piping that ran top to bottom, disappearing through both ceiling and floor. The floor itself had been built up to a flat plane, allowing for easy walking. Christopher wondered if it was hollow below the flooring, or full of some kind of filtration or power equipment.

  It wasn't idle curiosity: diving through the floor of a plane had saved the group before. In a previous life, Christopher had just paid attention to exits as a means to getting to his car first so he could escape the parking lot before traffic got crazy after a packed concert. Now he paid attention to them so he could escape before masses of coordinated zombies cornered and killed him or his friends.

  "Takatāpui is the word for a close or honored friend," said Mo. He pulled on a small pipe behind the others.

  "Ha!" shouted Buck. He pointed at Christopher. "Honored, sucker! You hear that?"

  "Though, there are those who also use the word for a man who is…." He looked at the little girls, still holding onto Maggie. Grinned at them, then grinned even wider at Buck. "Well, overly affectionate with his brothers."

  It took a moment for that to sink in. Buck got it first. He shook his head, then turned away just as Christopher understood. He crowed and pointed. "Would you prefer Poopy?" he said.

  "Shut. UP."

  Mo chuckled. "What you are about to see is the place I have hidden my greatest treasures."

  He pulled another pipe. Something clicked, and the entire wall – pipes included – swung aside. Not like a door: everything rolled to the side and simply disappeared. One moment a wall blocked the way, the next there was no indication that it had ever existed.

  Buck gasped. Mo shrugged in embarrassment. "Because I try to be good, I want to help those in need. But there is still the part of me that does not trust."

  "I guess that's why you need all this in the first place," said Buck.

  At the same time, Hope gasped and shouted, "It's WinCo!" Lizzy started clapping and shouting "Me candy!" in a never-ending refrain.

  WinCo was a Boise-based supermarket chain that specialized in family-size boxes of groceries, famously popular with kids for having barrels of bulk candy they could pick through. Christopher knew this because he'd been briefed on the place once before a photo shoot that took place in front of the oldest WinCo store in Idaho.

  He'd never actually been in one. He'd never gone grocery shopping for himself, in fact. But he suspected that it probably did look a lot like what the girls were seeing right now.

  There were piles of supplies stacked on top of each other. Pallets that supported huge cans of peanut butter sat atop more pallets of honey, and those atop more pallets that held industrial containers of rice and whole wheat. It was all stacked neatly, creating a new wall built up a good five feet in from the original wall of the pipe.

  On the other side of the hallway created by continuation of the underground pipe, there were neat stacks of MREs in a variety of colors and sizes. Each was marked clearly, some saying things like Chicken Noodle Soup or Pot Pie, others reading BBQ Beans and Franks. The variety was astonishing. Christopher doubted any of it tasted anything like it said it would, but he doubted you could starve eating it, either.

  "Me candy!" Lizzy shouted again.

  "Shhh," said Maggie. "There isn't any candy, here, sweetie."

  Lizzy stuck her lower lip out so far that it could have been used as a helipad. She inhaled, a deep, deep breath that left little doubt as to what was going to happen next.

  "Oh, geez," said Buck, already covering his ears.

  "Lizzy, no candy. No candy, Lizzy," said Hope, patting her little sister's back. Christopher couldn't help but smile in spite of the upcoming screams. Hope sounded crestfallen herself, but she submerged her sadness in concern for her little sister.

  "Lizzy, we just don't –"

  Maggie went silent so fast Christopher worried something had happened to her. It took a moment to realize that Mo was holding something out. Something round. A hole in the middle.

  "It is not candy," he said. "But does the little girl like lemon cookies?"

  Lizzy's response – to grab the cookie and gobble it down before shouting, "Me more!" was answer enough.

  "Where'd you get that?" demanded Buck.

  Mo laughed. "To survive is one thing. But I intend to live, my friend."

  He walked between the stacks of food, gesturing for the group to follow. "Come."

  16

  "We are in one of four spokes, leading out from the center of the installation," said Mo. He had grabbed a plastic tray of lemon cookies from off the stack of supplies and now fed them to the girls in a steady stream. Maggie did not complain. Buck did, but only because he hadn't been offered one. Once provided with his own stack of six cookies he was silent save only the occasional grunt as he wolfed them down. Crumbs spread across his broad chest.

  "Manners, Clucky," whispered Hope at one point.

  "Shut up and eat, Chicken," he whispered back. M
o handed her another cookie, the plastic wrap crinkling loudly in a way that Christopher remembered from early childhood: a maid sneaking cheap cookies to him between meals. That was before his parents shipped him off the first time. The maid's name was Consuela.

  She was probably dead.

  "The spokes," continued Mo, "lead to a central chamber where the pump is held."

  "Wondered how you dealt with that," said Buck. His voice was muffled by a mouthful of lemon. Mo handed him another cookie as well. And took one for himself. The two men chewed in unison, grinning at one another like fools.

  Maggie spoke, "Do you have toothbrushes?"

  It was a ridiculous question. Toothbrushes. Stupid. Strange. The kind of thing only a determinedly good mother could possibly ask. Christopher thought of Consuela again. Knew he should be thinking of his own mother, but that would just remind him of how he had last seen her, and he didn't want to think of that.

  Not wanting to think of something was impossible on its face: no sooner did Christopher think, I don't want to go there, than his mind catapulted him to just that forbidden place. Teeth and knives. Blood and bone. His parents locked in a battle it seemed they'd been fighting all his life, fighting quietly and politely, now at last given the permission they had always longed for, the permission to do what they had wanted to do since their marriage began. The permission to kill one another.

  Mo's voice saved him. Drew him out of the river of memory, just as the man's hand had pulled him free of the canal. Unlike with Ken, Christopher let his remembrances slide away from him. Opened his mental grasp and let them fall into the flow. Disappear.

  "I do have toothbrushes," said Mo. "And toothpaste."

  "Is the pump safe?" Buck again.

  Mo nodded. "The water comes from an underground river, four hundred and twenty-three feet below us, so likely safe from radioactive and biological contaminants for the foreseeable future."

  "Meaning?" said Christopher. He had stopped paying attention some time ago. If not to the words, then at least to their meaning.