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There was something about Meredith that drew Nora to watching her. She was too smug, had it together, didn’t emotionally waiver.

Nora was a mess.

She wanted her children, but a part of her was scared something went wrong. Repeatedly she reminded herself that all was well and a great big roast beef sandwich along with her family waited for her.

Nora couldn’t get beyond Meredith in those final minutes waiting for the door to open.

“She has no family,” Jason said. “There’s no worry. If all is fine, nothing changes, if it’s not, she loses nothing emotionally.”

“She knows,” Nora whispered. “She knew about this whole thing.”

Jason crinkled his brow. “Nora, she is in the dark as much as us.”

“No. She knows. When I walked into the event. She was at the table. On her phone, texting or something.”

“Ok.”

“No, it’s this uppity gala and she’s texting.”

“Yes, Nora, people text.”

“She knew the whole thing. Her behavior is odd.”

“If you want to discuss odd behavior.” Jason nodded once toward the door.

Nora looked over.

Exhaling heavily, John sighed out as he dropped yet another box by the door. “They were stacked there.”

Malcolm followed and placed a box down. “Last one or you wanna grab one more?”

“This should be good.” John said. He opened the flap of a box and pulled out an object. “I only took four of these, they are heavy. Any idea what this is.” He lifted it up. It was half the size of a car battery, with a handle and reflective top.

Malcolm took it and examined it. “It’s a solar battery. It’s a backup source for solar powered equipment. But it can be utilized elsewhere...”

“Sweet. We will need these.” John smiled.

Guiding Nora toward the door, Jason stepped to them. “John, what are you doing?”

“In case this door opens and nothing is there. I want everything out of here before the timer ticks down.”

Jason drew up a quirky look. “Are you that convinced things are bad?”

“I’m smart.” John said. “And this is my plan B. Seriously, if it is bad. It’s best to be prepared. If it’s early, we could emerge to a violent world, if we overslept, nothing will be good anymore.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Jason said.

“Call me what you may, but you’ll be calling me for food when you’re hungry.” John stated smug.

“Guys,” Amy said and pointed. “Twenty seconds.”

The digital time counted down while the eight of them waited by the door. Jason, Nora, Malcolm and Grant had two backpacks each.

John, of course, had what he could grab from the storeroom.

Amy, Meredith and President Thomas optimistically had nothing.

Ten seconds …

John inhaled deeply and bounced from heel to toe. He was closest to the door and he turned to look at those behind him. Each had placed on the clothes that were in their locker, no longer did any of them wear the comfortable drawstring pants. No longer did they look like lab experiments.

“Aren’t we all going to look silly with all this stuff when this door opens and people yell ‘welcome back’?” John asked the group.

Jason tossed a serious stare his way.

“Maybe not,” John cleared his throat.

Five.

Four.

Three … Two... One.

A deep buzz rang out and the door slid open.

John’s allergies,  would act up for sure, after all, according to Dr. Harrison, it was April. At least he missed those dreadful winters in Connecticut. Those were some of the thoughts that raced through his mind. None of them ever considered an elevator was behind the countdown door.

Yet, sure, enough it made sense why they couldn’t get it open, when it slid from left to right.

The opening of the door exposed a huge freight like elevator, one everyone hesitated in entering.

Using his foot, John pushed a box to ensure the door remained open, they started moving their belongings in there.

“None of you are gonna help?” he asked. The others just entered, moving to the side of the items John shoved inside.

Appearing frustrated, Jason set down his backpack. “I’ll help. Only because you’re so darned adamant about this. You’re scaring me.”

“Little voice of your savior not chiming in and telling you give it to him?” John asked with sarcasm. “Get it, the big Christian saying, Give it to God.”

A slight growl rolled from Jason’s throat, yet he continued to help move the boxes inside.

Soon enough Malcolm and Grant joined in, along with Nora. Meredith was agitated and the president urged them to hurry because he just wanted to get topside.

They got what they could inside, not everything fit, and John didn’t want to waste time, especially knowing the lab would be decontaminated.

The door to the elevator closed. John turned and faced the rear of the lift. Another door was there and he was willing to wager, that was the one that would open once they were lifted to the top.

With a shift, the elevator moved and they began to rise. It moved slowly and steadily for a long time. John figured they were deep in the belly of the complex.

Very deep.

Supplies surrounding him, John waited impatiently but didn’t show it. Even with his doomsday attitude and ‘just in case’ ways, John was optimistic. To him, when the elevator doors opened those supplies wouldn’t be needed, he’d be the butt of all jokes when the group of scientists, along with his pissed off wife, were there to greet him.

The spark of nerves fluttered in the pit of Jason’s stomach when he thought about reaching the top. He closed his eyes and said a prayer. To those outside the elevator it was seven months, to Jason it was only five days, but he missed his wife as if it were a year. His daughter, just a baby at the time he left, was probably walking.

He had missed so much.

Jason spent five days not only mentally preparing, but losing the anger. He was angry, someone took control of his life, his family’s life, and he wasn’t given a choice.

He wanted answers and those answers were just moments away. After he greeted his family, Jason was going to demand the truth. Why was he chosen? What made him special? Why would they do this to the world?

Who exactly was it that released the virus? Whose decision?

Mind racing, eyes glued to the door, the elevator jolted to a stop and Jason’s stomach flopped once more.

Hundreds of feet below they spent days with white, fluorescent style lighting. The elevator had the same clinical white lights. Jason expected when the doors opened to see the same light.

Instead … there was no light.

The door slid open and there was a wall of darkness. The elevator lamps cast enough light into the room for them to see it was empty.

No one was there.

No group of scientists, no family … not a single soul.

Tiny particles of light pushed through the slats of the tightly closed blinds on the windows to the room, doing very little to brighten the lab.

A large lab, void of people, filled with the stench of ‘stale’ was abandoned and apparently had been for quite some time.

Jason caught the sound of Amy’s whimper when he himself groaned out a quiet ‘no’ stepping from the elevator.

‘Someone jump out and yell surprise’, Jason thought. ‘Please jump out’.

No one did.

“This is a mistake,” Jason said with rushed breath. He spun and looked behind him. The others barely moved, they were in some sort of state of shock. “This is a mistake.”

Using the glow from the blinds as a guide, he hurried through the lab, bumping into chairs and other items as he made his way to the end of the lab.

He heard the call of his name, but he ignored it.

He had to see.

Where was everyone? Where were the scientists waiting to greet him? His family? Perhaps they actually woke up early. After all, Malcolm said the door timer started once the first Genesis unit revived.

At the end of the lab, to the left, was a door. A solid door with window panels on the side. He pushed on the door and stepped into a small reception area.

No bigger than a bedroom, the room had four chairs and a desk that contained a computer, no power of course. As Jason moved toward the next door, he paused and trailed his fingers across the surface of the desk.

Dust.

So much dust his fingers created an embedded mark. He rolled the dirt between his fingers and walked to the double doors in the reception area. He turned the handle.

“Jason,” Nora called his name.

He paused. “I have to see. Look at the dust, Nora.”

“Jason, listen. You only need to look out the window to …”

“I need to see. I need to feel it.” He clenched his fist and brought it to his chest, then continued on and opened the door.

He didn’t step into a hall, but rather a lobby, huge and open. It was bright, the sun blasted through the glass wall that he could only assume was the front of the building.

Through the sunlight he saw the dust, smelled it, and felt the thick humidity. It was hot.

He let his eyes adjust then turned to Nora. “Are you coming?”

She nodded and joined him.

Slowly Jason walked to the glass doors. Hands to the handle he pushed. The door barely budged.

He pushed harder and finally, with resistance, it opened.

The door wasn’t locked, weeds had grown through the cracks of the concrete and stopped the door from swinging outward.

Jason lost his breath when he stepped out into the sun. The heat added to the ‘slam’ of reality and he wheezed inward, trying to comprehend it all as he looked around.

It was a mainly concrete area, small buildings around a parking lot. But where there was grass it was overgrown. Weeds had grown wildly and high, looking more like odd shaped miniature trees. The seams of the sidewalk were filled with bright green growth. The buildings weren’t clean and shiny, they looked weather worn.

Not a car.

Not a sound.

Not a person.

After looking around, he raced toward the parking lot and stopped. The view before him was a barren world. Barren … dead.

“Hello!” He cried out. “Hello!”

His voice echoed back at him.

Face tensing with emotions, he spun and looked at Nora. She stood arms held tight to her body.

“Where is everybody?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Look at this.” He held out his hand. “This isn’t seven months. It can’t be.” He closed his eyes tight and with a painful realization that things had gone horribly awry, Jason, feeling defeated, released one quiet single sob and dropped to his knees. “What happened to our world?”

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be a source of support, but Nora couldn’t stay outside. Even with the sun shining, it exuded a sense of gloom and she returned to the small lab type office.

She felt hollow, empty and hadn’t a clue on how to process all that was going on. A feeling of loss washed over her. Her daughters, her husband. What had become of them? One thing Jason was correct about.

It was longer than seven months. It had to be. The growth of weeds and foliage was far too great.

When she returned, John had opened the blinds to all the windows and the room was brighter. The moods weren’t. Grant sat in a swivel chair staring out. Amy was in the corner staring at an empty backpack.

Malcolm was rummaging through desks, Meredith stood off watching him and John stood by the window.

“He’s still out there,” Nora said.

“Yes, well, maybe he is doing that praying thing he was famous for,” John replied.

“John, please.”

“He’s kneeling.”

Nora looked out the window. “That’s not a prayer kneel. That’s a ‘my world is over’ kneel.”

“Yes, well, emotionally we’re all doing that.” He turned from the window. “How are you?’

“Numb. Trying to process. Did the lab below decontaminate? Think we should get out?”

“I estimate it was two hundred feet below. Decontamination will be a fireball that will extinguish quickly, we’re fine. I believe and I also know …” He peered down to his watch. “We have about six minutes remaining. About right now, though, I can use some of that humor you said you had.”

“I don’t think there is humor in this.” Nora folded her arms tight. She turned her head to the banging of drawers. “Malcolm?”

Malcolm ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. “Did these people just up leave or not come to work?”

“What do you mean?” Nora asked.

“I mean the dates on papers stop on December fourteen. What the hell. I wish I could get into the computer.”

“What about the solar …” Nora’s eyes shifted. “Where’s the president.”

Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked around, as if the president would suddenly appear.

“Did he go outside?” John asked.

“No,” Nora replied. “I was out there. He didn’t come out.”

“Where in the world could he …” John stopped and looked beyond Nora.

She turned.

The elevator.

The door was closed.

Nora hurried to it. “You don’t think?”

“Unless he slipped out somewhere else,” John said.

There was a keypad next to the elevator, Nora lifted the cover and pressed the button.

Nothing.

She pressed it again.

“Come on,” she beckoned. “Open … damn it.”

“Nora,” Grant hurried her way and grabbed her hand. “We don’t know that he’s down there.”

“Where is he?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes. If we are all that’s left.” She kept pressing.

From across the room, John commented. “Maybe he should have thought of that before he agreed to this population control plan.”

Nora paused only briefly to glance John’s way and then she returned to hoping on that elevator. “Is no one else concerned?”

“What if you go down there?” Grant asked. “And he’s not there?  Then you are there when decontamination takes place. We don’t know. None of us paid that much attention. He could have slipped out after you. He could be in this building somewhere.”

“Again,” John said. “What does it matter? He was useless.”

Nora gasped out. “How can you say that?”

“He woke up, claimed he remembered nothing,” John said. “And then he tells us the entire plan. He was depressed, remorseful and he came up here and faced a reality he caused. Let him go. If he’s down there, let him burn. But please, for my sake, because I like you, step away from that elevator shaft … just in case.”

Malcolm said. “I think we should all go outside just in case.”

“They aren’t going to destroy a whole building in Marshal Flight center, or Redstone,” John stated. “We on a military base. No. It will snuff out.”

Softly, Grant spoke to Nora. “Come on. Nothing you can do.”

Hand still reaching to the elevator button, Nora backed up, rolled her fingers into a ball and turned around. “Maybe you’re right,” she said to Grant. “Maybe he’s in this building somewhere.”

“No,” Meredith said. “He took his life. I didn’t see him go down there, but it makes sense. Guilt will do that. None of this turned out as they planned. We see this.”

A squeaky chair caught Nora’s attention and she looked at Malcolm who plopped back down. He lifted a clipboard and began flipping pages.

“What are we doing?” Nora asked. “Dazed and confused, sitting around, staring out a window. Falling down emotionally?”

“I’m trying to find answers,” Malcolm said. “Something, anything that will tell us what went wrong.”

“The germ went out of control,” John added. “What more do you need to know?”

“How long we’ve been out? What exactly happened? I mean... really, think about it,” Malcolm said, “How do we know, maybe this base wasn’t just contaminated. You realize there is a nuclear power plant not far from here. What if the germ did more damage, what if power went down before they could secure that plant? There are also a million reasons why this portion of the base is abandoned. We haven’t left this room to find out.”

“I don’t see you jumping out the door,” John commented.

“No, because I wanted to see if anything was left behind.”

Grant spoke up. “Clues to whether or not it is just here or everywhere?”

“Yes. Unfortunately, this is turning up nothing. But I’ll look further.”

“Times up.” John said. He pursed his lips while staring at the watch. After a moment, he exhaled. “Didn’t feel a thing.”

Nora looked at him. “How can you be so cold and callous?”

“I’m not,” John said. “I’m in shock. I’m angry; I’m dumbfounded on what my next step is. I want answers and there are none. Not here. And unfortunately, the only person who has an inkling of what was going on or some sort of answer is two hundred feet below us living the lyrics to a Bon Jovi song and going out in a blaze of glory.”

Meredith spoke up. “That’s … that’s not necessarily true.”

“Which part?” John asked. “The Bon Jovi song or the fact that he is below us.”

“Oh, I believe he’s down there,” Meredith replied. “But I am talking about him being the person with all the answers. That isn’t necessarily true.” She paused. “Because I believe I have answers. I think.”