The Compound (6 page)

Her mother wasn’t as quiet or as gentle. Gram was part Hawaiian and half Chinese, along with an eighth each of overbearing and opinionated. We loved her, of course, even though her demeanor wasn’t anything like Mom’s. Gram was that way for a reason. As she told it, at one time she was as quiet as Mom. She married a music professor, had Mom, and was quite content. Their blissful life changed when Mom was five and her dad was killed in a car accident.

From what I knew, he left them with insufficient funds, and Gram was lonely. In addition, she thought Mom should have a male influence. Gram remarried, a man whose name I never knew.

The whole story never came my way, just bits through closed doors when I was supposed to be asleep, merged with things Eddy and Lexie heard. Putting them together, we determined the guy was a loser, demanding and scheming toward Gram, verbally abusive toward Mom. Gram finally kicked him out, even though it left her strapped for money once again. Mom came out of it quiet and sensitive, but she was not without resources. She had inherited her father’s talent for music.

I loved to listen to her, especially moments like this, when she didn’t know she had an audience. Somehow she seemed freer, more at ease. A way she never seemed around my dad.

She set her bow aside for a moment to switch sheet music.

I ducked down in case she turned around. She started again. Debussy. The music gave me goose bumps.

Even if she had been completely void of talent, she still would have taken away people’s breath with her looks. I saw it in their eyes, whenever she came to one of my school events. Oh, at first the teachers and the other parents were always disappointed when my dad didn’t show up, but I think Mom ended up being more interesting to them.

Her father’s Irish and Scottish background had combined with Gram’s ancestry, leaving Mom with dark hair, deep green eyes, and slightly Polynesian features. She’d walk in the room in her expensive clothes. Classic, elegant, never flashy, but still she’d stand out. I was proud that I had the prettiest mom.

Funny, we had all inherited Mom’s looks. Except Eddy and I had brown eyes like Gram. Even though Lexie was adopted, she had the same dark hair as Mom. None of us looked like my dad with his fair features. At least the four of us didn’t.

As for the ones in the yellow room, I couldn’t say. I’d never seen them.

Trying not to make any noise as I stood up, I left without
revealing my presence. In the carpeted section of the Compound, there was only one room left: the chapel.

For as long as I could remember, Dad had been adamant about our churchgoing. During my childhood, unless we were dying or close to it, our butts were in a Methodist pew every Sunday. I knew more Bible verses than any kid had a right to. And I’m sure the church loved getting my father’s tithes. The minister certainly seemed pleased to see us arrive every Sunday.

Even in the Compound we remembered the Sabbath day and kept it holy. For the first several years, each Sunday, as well as every Christmas Eve, Dad delivered a brief sermon. We sang a few hymns as Lexie accompanied us on the organ, then Mom read some Bible verses. Those terse moments of religion were sufficient enough to feel that God was with us in the Compound. We never had any reason to doubt that He was. And then, with no explanation, Dad quit holding chapel services just like he quit working out. So I hadn’t been in there for a while.

The chapel had four rows of carved wooden pews facing a small altar with a wooden pulpit. A large gold cross hung on the wall behind the pulpit, and an organ sat off to one side. Heavy purple curtains framed the setting, and except for the small size, it looked much like the church we attended in Seattle.

It felt strange being in there alone. The room was so hushed and empty.

I stepped onto the pulpit. I’d never been up there before. Dad’s Bible was on top and I opened it. A sheet of blue
lined paper fell out. In Dad’s handwriting was a list of several items regarding banking and stocks. The title was composed of two words:

Tell Phil
? Why would Dad have a note to his accountant sitting in his Bible? The date was a few months ago, but the year must have been wrong. It was old, of course. Had to be. Guess he needed to be reminded of the old world as much as we did. Or maybe he’d done it on purpose, written a note to his accountant like he did in the old world a dozen times a day. Maybe he needed to pretend in order to feel a little normal once in a while, just like I did.

I put the note back where I found it.

A cursory search of the rest of the room revealed nothing. Not that I knew what I was looking for. I left.

At the end of the carpeted section of the Compound stood a double door. As I stepped through, a rush of air hit me. The ceiling was twenty-five feet over my head. The entire space went as far as I could see to my sides and front, and was open except for various walls and doors every now and then—a warehouse. There were storage areas, shelves that stretched all the way to the ceiling, and the freezers, twenty of them.

I hopped into the golf cart sitting near the door and drove, stopping randomly at one of the storage rooms. I opened the door. Of course I’d been in all of them before many times, to get toilet paper or laundry detergent. Had I ever really considered how Dad had done it all?

The Compound itself must have taken years to build, not even counting all the planning. How do you know how much toilet paper you’ll use in fifteen years? Also, how could a project like this, headed up by my dad, not make it on CNN? If I had worked on the Compound, then found out we were under attack, this is the first place I would have headed.

The answer was probably money, which my dad had loads of. Power, too. He probably made everyone sign a confidentiality agreement and paid them a lot to do so. It was sort of a constant in the old world. My father had the means to get whatever he wanted.

That was just how things were. And we all knew it.

I glanced at my watch and realized I was late for chores, so I headed to the very back of the Compound.

My main job was to run the hydroponic garden, an enormous open room where vegetables grew in troughs of water, relying on artificial sunlight to grow more rapidly than in traditional soil gardens. I’d learned about hydroponics at a local co-op we went to every Saturday on the outside. While I learned how to grow vegetables, Eddy learned about livestock and poultry. My mom learned how to bake bread, can vegetables. Part of Dad’s planning, I’d come to realize, that we all have a role in the subsistence world of the Compound.

The tomatoes, lettuce, and red bell peppers were close to another harvest. I started some more seedlings by pushing seeds into small squares of sponges. One row of grow light bulbs flickered.

I held my breath.

They came back on. Stayed on.

I breathed again, relieved.

After nine months in the Compound, some bulbs had gone out. I replaced them, but the light didn’t look the same. After checking the storage room with the supply of grow light bulbs, I found a nasty surprise. More than three-fourths of them were normal fluorescent bulbs, no good for growing anything.

Depending on how long the grow bulbs lasted, our supply of vegetables would run out around the time I turned eighteen, if not sooner. So I had good reason to panic every time those bulbs flickered. Especially when I took into account the rest of the food situation. And that was something I tried not to think about.

I
FINISHED MY WORK IN THE HYDROPONICS AND HEADED TO
the computer room to do some schoolwork. We had the best computers, of course, at least they were the best available when we entered the Compound. Dad had started his company on his own, building computers, and he still created prototypes for new ones, each better than the last. I could only imagine how many millions of dollars the latest model would have made. It was weird sometimes to think about money when there was no need for it in the Compound. I guess I’d always been tuned into it, though, knowing we’d had so much.

Our computers were loaded with educational software, all programmed to work at the user’s pace with an infinite level of endless subjects. Although I had just turned fifteen, I was on my first year of college studies. This wonder boy was gifted in math and sciences, big shocker there. Plus I still studied Mandarin.

Lexie was on her first year of college, studying literature and Greek. I’m pretty sure she would have been more of a vapid socialite in the old world. In the Compound she studied, but only the subjects she liked. She refused to do any math or sciences and Dad let her get away with it. Perhaps he thought it was a waste of time nurturing the other areas. Most likely Lexie just got her way with him, once again.

I spread my books out on the table, wondering what it would actually be like to have to study in a room full of people, to only have a small allotted space. Not the entire room, as I did. I never had to tell anyone to pipe down so I could concentrate, that’s for sure.

A word problem in calculus was totally confusing me, so I finally gave in and decided to ask Dad for some help. His office was set apart from the rest of the rooms down a private alcove, and always locked up tight whenever he wasn’t there. I’d never been inside.

I reached his office and knocked on the door. It clicked open. He must not have shut it tight. He’d likely just stepped out for a moment, knowing none of us were usually around his office that time of day.

“Dad?”

No answer.

I pushed the door a bit with my foot. I took another glance down the hallway to make sure it was empty, and then stepped onto the threshold. The smell of pipe tobacco hit my nose as my quick gaze absorbed the décor.

A rush of déjà vu flooded me as I realized the office was
identical to Dad’s office in our house in Seattle. A thicker coating of dust on the stack of old
National Geographies
was the only thing that was different. A huge chair on wheels still sat behind the richly polished paneled desk. Three separate flat-monitor computers, a wall of clocks with several time zones, and his favorite Seattle Seahawks football phone. Everything almost nearly the same. Except for the padlocked door on the far side of the room.

“Eli?”

I’m sure I looked guilty when I twisted toward him, but I tried to be casual. “Dad, hey, I need to ask you something.”

“What the hell are you doing in here?” His frown was fierce.

My words stammered out. “I—I wasn’t doing anything.”

He looked beyond me, into the office, like he was making sure everything was still there. “You’re not allowed in here.”

I took a breath, and then stated in an even tone, “I wasn’t in your office, Dad. I just need your help.” I held up a notebook, revealing scribbled equations.

“Oh.” He waited for me to pass by him, into the hallway. Better than anyone else, Dad understood the need for me to not be touched. Not that he’d ever really been the touchy-feely type, anyway. He shut the office door behind him, tight this time. “Let’s take a look.”

Back in the computer lab I explained how I’d tried to solve the problem, unsuccessfully.

Dad rubbed his chin and squinted at my writing. “Did you convert it to math?”

I held out my notes. “That’s what I’m trying to do. The quantities aren’t fixed.”

“Did you name them by a variable?”

I shook my head. “Didn’t get that far.”

“Let’s try a similar one.” He jotted down a complicated equation. His mind seemed to work so fast that his fingers couldn’t keep up.

I tried to solve for
x
, but couldn’t figure it out. Dad being so close made me nervous, not able to think straight.

“Come on, Eli. Think.” He solved it as I watched. “You can do this.”

The answer dawned on me and I smacked my forehead with one hand. “Stupid. That was one of my first ideas but it didn’t seem right.”

Dad shrugged. “You should have gone with your first instinct. It’s usually right.” He stood. “I need to get back to work.”

A
FTER
D
AD LEFT
, I
HAD TROUBLE CONCENTRATING ON THE
rest of my studies. Why was Dad so freaked about me being in his office? Before we came here, if he was working on new software or a new computer design, he was doubly cautious about security. But why would he be paranoid down here? Who was I going to tell? And what was behind that locked door? Other than the room behind the yellow door, I’d toured the entire Compound so many times I knew every room. Or so I thought.