Page 109 of Cruel Riches

21

Alexis

As soon asNate was gone, I searched the bomb shelter.

It wasn’t that I thought he was lying—he clearly believed there was no way out of this bunker beyond the hatch, or else he wouldn’t have left me here all alone. I figured it might be a simple case of ignorance. Nate may have come down here and explored when he was a kid, but there was a chance he’d missed something.

I knew from reading a dystopian novel years ago that most bomb shelters had more than one hatch—a primary hatch and an escape hatch. I already knew where the primary hatch was, and it was locked from the outside, so I needed to find the escape hatch.

I started by opening every single cupboard in the space, figuring there might be something hidden behind one of them. Unfortunately, there was nothing behind any of them. Next, I moved on to the two large storage areas at the far end of the cell; the ones that were bricked up at the back. Once I’d taken every single can and package out to free up the space, I crawled in and pressed my hands all over the bricks, feeling for a loose patch.

Nothing.

“Dammit,” I muttered. I didn’t bother pressing the walls of the main shelter or passage leading down to it from the primary hatch. It was all concrete, so there was no way anything was hidden there.

An idea suddenly struck me, and I started tapping on the floor, listening for echoes. A feeling of weightlessness descended on me when I discovered a hollow spot beneath an old rug.

Holy shit.This was it—an escape hatch!

I pulled the rug back, and my lips curved into a triumphant smile. As I suspected, there was a small hatch there.

With tingling hands and a giddy sensation in my stomach, I wrenched the stiff hatch open and peered downward. My heart immediately sank.

It wasn’t an escape hatch after all. It was just another storage locker for extra food.

“Fuck!” I gritted my teeth and slammed my hand down on the solid ground, chest tightening in a mix of disappointment and anger.

So close.I was so close. Then… nothing.

Pain rocketed up my hand, and I got up with a grimace and went over to the sink, hoping to run some water over it to ease the ache. I shouldn’t have smashed it on the ground like that, but I couldn’t help it. I was so fucking mad. So sick of being caged like an animal for something I didn’t even do.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I muttered when I turned the tap on to find that the sink didn’t work. I went over to the decontamination area next, and I discovered that the old shower didn’t work either. No wonder Nate ended up allowing me to shower in the house—there was no functional water system down here.

Letting out a heavy sigh, I rubbed my throbbing hand and started investigating the rest of the amenities in the shelter.

Surprisingly, the toilet worked, even though there was very little water in it. It seemed to function via gravity feed, which meant there must be a tank somewhere beneath it. As long as I poured in a little water from one of the plastic bottles whenever I used it, any waste products would go down eventually.

It wasn’t exactly a five-star hotel room, but it was a hell of a lot better than sitting in a cell with a filthy bucket filled with waste products, like I’d been doing for almost two weeks before now.

Another bonus to this place was the food. After inspecting all the cans and packages, I saw that Nate was right—none of the stuff was appetizing to a regular, well-fed person. But he failed to account for the fact that I was practically starving. Anything with calories was good as far as I was concerned, even these old cans of beans and soup.

I wasn’t worried about their long-expired status. I knew expiry dates meant very little when it came to canned goods that had been stored well. They might taste a bit weird, but they wouldn’t kill me.

Even if they did, I’d rather die from that than at Nate’s hands. What an amazing ‘fuck you’ that would be to that arrogant asshole—death from food poisoning before he could murder me.

I opened a can of beans and ate the entire thing within two minutes. Then I amused myself by reading every single label on every single package in this place. I literally had nothing better to do.

After a while, I crawled onto one of the bunks and pulled the itchy gray blanket over my face. It was probably only lunchtime, but I was ready for a long sleep. Being trapped in the Blackthorne tunnels had wreaked havoc on my circadian rhythms.

My eyelids started to feel heavier and heavier until I finally drifted off into a dreamless sleep. That was the one good thing about being in this torturous captivity situation—I didn’t have nightmares as often as I used to. I figured it was probably because my waking life had become a complete nightmare in itself, so my brain was giving me a break when I slept.

A while later, my eyes snapped open. At first, I couldn’t identify what had woken me, but then I remembered.

Music.

With knitted brows, I got off the bunk and slowly moved around the shelter, trying to locate the source of the sound. It was barely more than a vibration, but after spending so much time locked underground, my ears had become attuned to even the slightest shifts in the air.

When I approached the right-hand storage door, the music became clearer. It was still extremely faint, but I could make out some instruments—trumpets, piano, strings, drums, saxophones. Big band music, probably from the 1940s or 50s.

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