Page 17 of The Midnight Hour
Vaguely I recall reading an article about how a bunker was the latest outrageously expensive gadget for your average billionaire. I don’t remember anything about it, beyond my own internal eye-roll at the whole notion.
“So you were in some luxury bunker?” Sam asks, leaning forward, his voice rising with interest. “What was it like?”
“Pretty nice,” William replies briefly. He looks guarded, like he doesn’t want to tell us the details.
Daniel lets out a short laugh of genuine amusement. “I’ll bet. I was wondering why you looked so put together.” William gives a grimacing sort of smile, half apology, half embarrassment. “So whatwasit like?” Daniel presses.
“It was nice,” Nicole interjects. Her voice is terse, and she doesn’t look anyone in the eye. “We paid for a unit. It wasnotcheap.”
I glance at her curiously, wondering why she seems so defensive. If we’d had the money to buy a unit in a luxury bunker, we would have. That is, if we could have predicted a nuclear holocaust, which we couldn’t have, and in any case we didn’t have any money. But I don’t blame this family for trying to stay safe. That is the principle, the burning desire, that has guided me these last seven months. It’s why I still struggle to look my son in the eye.
“Yeah, I heard those units go for, like, two million bucks,” Sam continues with enthusiasm. William’s tight jaw is all the answer we need to know his guess is not far off the mark. “And then monthly association fees,” he continues. “Like, a couple of grand. I saw a YouTube video on it.”
YouTube videos. In this ravaged world, it feels like he might as well have said he read about it on a papyrus scroll. “And they have all kinds of stuff,” he continues, seemingly oblivious to our guests’ growing tension. “Like, a gym and a movie theater and even a swimming pool. And electricity and even internet…they used this special microwave satellite thing and wind and solarpower. The doors to the place were three inches thick of reinforced steel. Nothing’s getting through that.” I think of the wooden door to the cottage and how that gang blew it right open. “They were able to grow their own vegetables and stuff,” Sam continues, his eyes alight, “and even breed fish. Aqua-something.”
“Aquaponics,” Ben says, the first time he’s spoken. He still sounds bored, but now I wonder if that is just a cover. The curve of his cheek and the tremble of his lips remind me of how young he is, how protected he’s been.
“Yeah, aquaponics!” Sam nods in enthusiasm. “That isseriouslycool.”
“It does sound cool,” Daniel agrees, eyeing the Strattons consideringly. “And like a pretty good set-up.” Which is a massive understatement. I’m trying to imagine getting through these last seven months in such a place, and I absolutely can’t.
“It was,” William agrees, as terse as his wife.
“So why did you leave?” Daniel prompts. The question is an obvious one, yet with no apparent answer.
The Strattons are all silent for a long moment. “The guy who ran it died,” he finally says. “Heart attack. And then it wasn’t such a good set-up.” A silence falls like a weight on us. I’m afraid I think I know pretty much exactly what he means. Maybe a billionaire bunker isn’t so much better than a dilapidated cottage in the backwoods, after all.
“So you just left?” Daniel says after a moment, half question, half statement. Nicole is staring at the ground, and Ben is still hunched over, his arms drawn around his knees. I can almost see the cloud of sorrow and fear hovering over them, dark and deadening.
“We were kicked out,” William replies. “Someone else took over and they wanted their friends and family to have most of the units, so anyone who wasn’t their friend had to go.” He makes it sound like they sent them off with a giftbasket and a friendly wave, but I doubt very much it happened like that. How it really went down, William doesn’t seem to want to say. I don’t want to think about how bad a situation like that might get. A three-inch door of reinforced steel is great until you’re on the wrong side of it.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Daniel tells him, and I wonder if he is deliberately parroting William Stratton’s earlier remark.
William nods, and we are all silent, no one looking at anyone else.
“So where was this bunker?” Daniel finally asks.
“In upstate New York,” William replies. “Just north of Watertown.”
We might have driven by it, on our way to the cottage. Maybe Daniel drove by it himself, when he went to get Sam, although I have no idea how he got Sam, or what his route was.
“So you left the bunker,” Daniel says, “and you just started driving?”
William grimaces, without looking anyone in the eye. “Pretty much.”
“Where did you get the car?” This from Mattie, her voice surprisingly suspicious.
“We’d left our cars on the facility site,” William tells her.
“And they weren’t stolen?” I interject, thinking of my dad’s truck.
William shakes his head. “These places are incredibly well resourced, everything behind a huge fence, watchtowers, security cameras…you can’t even imagine the level of security and technology they have at their disposal.”
“And they let you take your cars?” This again from Mattie, who is sounding seriously skeptical. “Andthe guns in your trunk?”
William’s mouth tightens. “They did. We carried the ammunition separately, but…they weren’t totally heartless.”Nicole lets out a disbelieving huff, and he amends apologetically, “They didn’t want us hanging around.”
“That was pretty nice of them,” Mattie mutters, and I know she’s thinking of my dad’s truck, too. For being kicked out of a billionaire bunker, the Stratton family doesn’t seem to have suffered too much.
