Half Lives (23 page)

I peeked into the first room. The space was high enough for me to stand up straight and lie down spread-eagled. Several pipes of various sizes were piled in the middle. ‘I’ll take
this one.’ I thought I should be closest to the door. I wanted to be the first one to hear the knock when my parents arrived.

Chaske walked to the next cubbyhole and said, ‘I’ll take this one.’ The space looked like a carved-out, human-sized mouse hole. His room was roundish. It was about two feet
taller than he was. It could have fitted a bed and a couch – if he’d had them.

‘I’ll take the next one,’ Marissa said, and pointed to the next opening. She picked it without even looking inside.

Both Tate and Midnight poked their heads in every cubbyhole they encountered. Tate even dropped to his hands and knees and crawled down a munchkin-sized tunnel. He flipped his body around so he
was facing us. ‘Maybe I’ll take this one.’

‘Don’t you want a bigger one? Aren’t you going to feel . . .’ I was going to say trapped, but how could he possibly feel more trapped?

‘Yeah, maybe.’ He wiggled so his face poked back outside the hole – like a groundhog looking for his shadow. Midnight pranced over to Tate and tilted her head and arched her
neck until Tate butted heads gently with the cat.

The tunnel kept spiralling down forever. One spiral from my new bedroom was the room where Chaske and Tate had found the water and cots. The main tunnel and the lighting system ended in a square
about the same dimensions as my entire house. The main tunnel split in two. One tunnel was covered in thick, smoky plastic sheeting hung on a metal frame. We agreed that this was the perfect space
for our ‘necessary’. This far down the tunnel would allow a little privacy and maybe even keep the stench factor to a minimum. Chaske said he would hang one of the Maglites somehow so
we could have at least a little light behind the plastic curtain.

I walked over to the other tunnel entrance.

‘That dead-ends after maybe twenty feet,’ Chaske said.

The square of light quickly faded into blackness.

‘I explored it earlier,’ Tate said proudly. ‘It’s like there was a cave-in or something.’

My stomach lurched, but the others appeared to be unfazed by the mention of rocks crashing down.

Tate continued, ‘The tunnel ends in a pile of rocks.’

‘And we agreed.’ Chaske waited until he caught Tate’s eye. ‘We agreed that we should stay out of that tunnel.’

‘Fine by me,’ I said

‘Hey, Chaske!’ Tate called, straddling the line where light turned to dark. He swayed in and out of the light. ‘What if I use your tent and sleep right here?’

‘I don’t know,’ Chaske paused and looked at each one of us in turn. ‘I think it would be best if we all stayed a bit closer together.’ There was something he
wasn’t saying. Did he think something might happen in the dark of night? Or did he think the bunker was unsafe that far underground. I was thankful he wasn’t sharing whatever fears he
had with us. My brain was already overloaded with end-of-the-world
and
end-of-me scenarios.

‘I think it’s OK,’ I told Tate. Keeping the noisemaker as far from me as possible seemed like a great idea. I also had to admit I was impressed by Tate’s courage. I
wouldn’t want to sleep all the way back here by myself.

‘OK,’ Chaske reluctantly agreed. ‘Well, that’s it. That’s all there is.’

I don’t know what I’d expected – satellite TV, maybe a radio, skylights – but it wasn’t this. I guess I’d pictured one of those bomb shelters like they show
in the movies. The ones stocked with food and entertainment and a bare swinging lightbulb. I was thankful to my parents for the food in my backpack and the water, but somehow I’d thought they
might have rigged something like a five-star hotel crossed with an amusement park underground.

‘All right, team. We’d better get to work,’ Marissa said and hooked her arm through Chaske’s. ‘As my coach always says, “Team equals
together everyone
achieves a lot
”.’

‘More,’ I said. I’d heard that quote before, or maybe seen it on a bulletin board with some picture of skydivers hand in hand in a free fall. ‘Otherwise it spells
teal
.’

‘Whatever. Chaske and I will work on the . . . what did you call it, Ice? Oh, yeah, the necessary. Maybe you and Tate could go back up and get our supplies stored in one of those extra
rooms,’ she said to me.

I bristled again at being told what to do. I had to assume Marissa meant well. She was getting us organized. She was the Cheer Captain and maybe she couldn’t help it. But this was
my
bunker and I’d saved her, all of them. I wasn’t proud of myself for thinking this way. I couldn’t deny that something had already changed between us.

‘Race you, Dread!’ Tate called, and legged it up the tunnel.

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes and followed Tate at a considerably reduced speed.

Tate and I dumped the food and medical supplies in Chaske’s sleeping bag and headed for what would become our supply room. He held two corners and I held the other two. We
stretched the sleeping bag between us and side-stepped down the long incline.

As we walked deeper and deeper underground, the further and further I felt from my normal life. It was as if everything outside had ended already.

Tate began to sing, ‘“Quit yo cryin’ be-otch. No time for lyin’ we-otch”.’ He sang the same lyrics over and over.

I gritted my teeth determined not to say anything. This was his coping mechanism. I knew the song. It was ‘Outta Time’ by In Complete Faith. It didn’t help that it was one of
Tristan’s favourite songs.

He mumbled through the next part of the song but hit the chorus with gusto. ‘Don’t hold on to hate. Accept your fate. We had time. Not so much time. All you got is time till
it’s gone.’

I’d never really listened to the lyrics before. ‘Hey, Tate,’ I said when we’d navigated the first turn and I couldn’t take it any longer. ‘How about we switch
stations?’

‘Yeah, sure. You got a request?’ He honestly asked me that question.

My body was tight with a terror that I didn’t think would ever go away, but somehow this kid was managing to have a little bit of fun. I couldn’t take that away. ‘Whatever you
want,’ I said. ‘You have a really nice voice.’

‘Thanks,’ Tate said. ‘I’m going to be a rock star someday.’

Didn’t he get it? There
were
no more rock stars. No more music. Probably no more nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Stop it,
I told myself as Tate started to sing another song.

‘“Wha Eva. Wha Eva. The bad, the good. Wha Eva. I put my faith in Wha Eva. Wha Eva alone”.’ I sang along with him and, to my surprise, by the time we’d reached the
supply room, I’d forgotten our dire situation for a few seconds.

‘I’m going to deliver the cots to everyone’s rooms, OK, Dread?’ Tate said when we’d laid the sleeping bag and its contents out on the floor of the supply room.
‘You can handle this organizing stuff?’

As soon as I’d said, ‘Sure,’ the boy was out the door and up the tunnel.

My head was fuzzy with exhaustion. It was only the first day and I could feel the claustrophobia playing around the edges of my mind.
Stay busy,
I told myself. No time to think. I got
right to work, stacking and piling and then re-stacking and sorting. Whenever I paused, my brain would pluck the faces of Mum, Dad, Lola, Tristan and other people and things from my life before.
Those images flicked like a PowerPoint presentation to random people, such as my English teacher Mrs Lord, or the president of the United States, or the old guy at the corner shop who gave me one
of those mini-Peppermint Patties every time I dropped by. The grief these memories triggered was overwhelming. I had to turn off that part of my brain that wanted to flick to my old life.

I finally figured out some sort of system for our supplies. Everything was stacked neatly first by category – food, medicine, tools – and then in alphabetical order. I’m not
sure it would have made any sense to anyone else, but it kept me occupied.

Tate was singing at the top of his lungs. I could hear the constant clink and tap of Chaske and Marissa chiselling out a trench for our toilet. The idea, Chaske had explained, was to dig a new
hole every few days and fill the old one in. I sort of gagged at the thought of our ‘necessary’ situation.

Tate called out, ‘Six twenty-two!’ and added, ‘Time to eat!’

Everyone gathered for dinner. Chaske and Marissa were covered in a fine, rocky powder. We were almost too tired to eat our half a power bar and stick of beef jerky. Only Midnight seemed
delighted by our dinner. She gobbled down the jerky as if it were a double pepperoni pizza with extra cheese. We nibbled our dry and greasy dinner.

‘If we ration carefully, I figure we have enough food for maybe three months,’ I told them after we’d finished eating. ‘Half a power bar for breakfast and lunch and half
an MRE for dinner. We can substitute jerky and Marissa’s snacks for a few meals each week.’

‘OK, that’s totally do-able. I survived my first cheer camp on one yogurt and two bananas a day.’

‘That doesn’t sound like a lot to me,’ Tate said, surveying the empty wrappers tossed in the middle of our circle. ‘I’m still hungry.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘But we’ve got to try, OK?’

Tate shrugged.

We retired to our cubbyholes when Tate told us it was nine o’clock. No one made a move to turn out the lights, and I was glad. I curled up in my cot and was pleased when Midnight snuggled
up next to me as if she knew that I needed a little comfort. I clutched the key in my fist. Holding it made me feel as if I had the power to leave whenever I liked. I knew that wasn’t true,
but it made me feel the tiniest bit less trapped. I didn’t want to think any more about toilets or MREs or how we were going to survive.

One day down. How many more did we have to go?

We slept most of the next day. It was easier to lie on my cot and doze in and out of consciousness. Then we were like ping-pong balls in a swimming pool. We’d float on our
own for a while and bump into one another. We didn’t know what to say or how to act. The novelty had worn off and reality had set in. We were hungry and tired. None of us wanted to talk about
our situation nor about anything that would remind us of what we’d lost.

Late that night I walked to the entrance with only a flashlight to illuminate my way. I thought about leaving. I even held the key up to the lock. But I couldn’t open the door. The
infected, vampires, zombies, soldiers, aliens, serial killers, snakes, spiders and even sharks now inhabited the space outside that door. Or, worse yet, there might be nothing out there. A vast
grey space with everything burned to ash.

It’s hard to explain how you grieve for the loss of the world as you knew it. One day Lola and I were sipping cappuccinos at Starbucks, me indecisive about a Skinny Blueberry Muffin or
chocolate chunk cookie and Lola giving me the scoop on Wyatt and Saleha’s Facebook flaming. The next day, everyone and everything was stripped away.

I’d close my eyes and see my parents screaming in pain. Then I’d see them in coffins. I couldn’t bear that thought so I countered every horrible image with a mundane one of me
and Dad licking fingers covered in brownie batter and laughing when there wasn’t enough left to bake. Or Mum and I watching
An American Werewolf in London
and screaming at the scary
parts, even though we’d seen them all before. My parents would be coming to get me. They would. That’s the thought I clung to with all of my might.