Page 87 of The Stolen Princess
“Back then, they called them bomb shelters. They were built underground and made with the strongest materials. Not only would these shelters keep them safe from bombs, but they also protected them from some of the natural disasters.”
“Why are you telling me all of this?”
“A couple of days ago, I found one of those bomb shelters...from before Desolation.”
Myka’s mouth opened. “You mean you found the remains of a bomb shelter?”
“No.” His eyes left his steps in front of him and met hers. “I found the entire shelter still intact.”
“How is that even possible? It’s been over two hundred years. How was the shelter not destroyed or falling apart?”
“I don’t know, but I think it has something to do with the fact that it was built into the ground, and there were no major earthquakes that we know of in this part of Wisconsin.”
“Where is it?”
“Down there,” Drake said. He pointed to the sloping hill in front of them. “Careful. It’s pretty steep, and all the rain yesterday made it slick.”
Myka took deliberate steps, trying not to fall, but the ground beneath her moved, and her feet slipped. She almost fell, but Drake wrapped an arm around her waist, catching her. It was a small gesture, something any human being might do to make sure the person next to them didn’t fall, but for some reason, that small action made her stomach fill with butterflies. Myka had waited her whole life to feel butterflies. How disappointing that the feeling had been triggered by her enemy. Was Drake her enemy? Lately, it was getting hard to tell. She pulled away, not knowing what else to do.
When they got to the bottom of the hill, Drake turned to the right. In front of her, built into the earth, was a black metal wall. In the middle of the black wall was a silver rectangle. She assumed it was a moveable door that opened wide. To the right of the larger door was a smaller metal door with rust covering the front of it.
“The door had some sort of air-tight seal on it that helped preserve everything inside. Of course, I had to shoot the lock and the door so I could get it open.”
“It’s amazing,” she said.
“If you think that’s amazing, wait until you see what’s inside.”
A small smile spread across her lips as she approached the building. Her fingers danced along the cool metal, taking in its magnificence. She touched every crusted piece of rust, every scrape. It had been damaged in places, and yet it still stood.
Drake held the door open for her, and she swallowed back a new set of butterflies in her stomach—butterflies of excitement from a world lost long ago. Myka stepped over the threshold and was immediately assaulted with a damp, earthy smell. The bomb shelter was enormous, with ceilings at least twenty feet high. It was long and rectangular and filled with items—pre-Desolation treasures that had been spared the elements and turmoil of the past.
It was the most incredible thing she had ever seen, better than the artifact room back at Tolsten House. She looked at Drake as if asking for permission to touch and explore. He nodded back at her with a smile that said he understood her excitement.
“Go ahead,” he said.
Myka walked to the table in front of her, running her fingers on top of the white plastic, grazing them over the logo etched into it, reading it out loud, “Lifetime.” On top of the table were gadgets and things that she had never seen before.
He pointed to a black machine in front of them with different shaped buttons on the front of it. “I don’t know exactly what this machine did, but I think it went with the discs next to it. And if you read the back of their cases, some of them mention the wordmusic,so I’m guessing it was some sort of music player.”
Myka thumbed through the stack of square plastic cases. Each one had a colorful picture, design, or name on top. She began at the top of the pile and read the words on each case like book spines. “ABBA, AC DC, The Beatles, Carrie Underwood, Ed Sheeran…” She smiled to herself. “They’re alphabetized.”
“Yeah.”
Next to the music player were stacks and stacks of books that Myka had never heard of or seen before. Then there were piles of colorful boxes stacked on top of each other—Monopoly, Mancala, Ticket to Ride, Blokus. There was a clear plastic bag with some sort of zipper lock. Inside were stacks of cards, all with different names on them, Uno, Rook, Five Crowns, Phase 10.
“I’ve tried to leave everything mostly as it was when I found it,” Drake explained.
“Do you know what all this stuff was used for or why it was in here?” she asked.
He moved beside her. “I think that everything in here was important to the families who hid in the shelter during Desolation. Essential items for survival.”
She looked around, noticing the couch in the back facing a black screen hanging on the wall that could only be a television. Cords hung down from the TV, connecting to a box on the ground. Four black steering wheel looking things with buttons all over them lay next to the little black box. In the back corner, there were mattresses with pillows and blankets and another table with emptyKirkland’s Choiceboxes on them. There were three blue jugs at least four feet tall that sat on the floor next to the table. Next to those were six smaller red jugs that had pipes sticking out of the top. Myka could see how some of the items might have been essential for their survival, but then she looked at the TV. If they only had their essential items, what was that doing in the shelter?
“Not all of this could have been essential,” she said, kicking her toe up against a large square machine that sat on the ground. The metal on top was red, and it had bars that ran along each side, and a set of wheels on the bottom so it could easily be pulled around. “I mean, did they really need to bring this thing?” Myka bent down, wiping the dust off of the side so she could read what it said. “Craftsman Generator 3500 Watt.” She raised her eyebrows at Drake. “See. Who needs a machine that generates 3500 crafts when you’re trying to survive?” She shook her head. “Not essential.”
Drake laughed, a beautiful, deep sound, and she had to turn away, or he might see the flush growing up her cheeks.
Really, Myka had no idea what most of the items were. She had read a lot and spent hours in the artifact room at Tolsten House, but all of those items were broken pieces of history. This bomb shelter was the entire picture, and she liked guessing what life might have been like before Desolation, even if she was wrong.
