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  He paused, and she watched him smiling, probably thinking about his next fish fry.

  “Anyway, the uh, fish waste gets broken down by bacteria into nitrates, which get pumped back into the hydroponic beds where the nutrients get sucked up by the duckweed. The effluent from the duckweed gets pumped back into the fish tank and recycled.” He clapped his hands together and then flicked his palms out flat in a gesture that reminded her of a magician’s flourish. “And shazam, you have a perfectly balanced system, just like nature intended. You see, nature figured this shit out a long time ago. We’re just too stupid and lazy to pay attention. People are just starting to wake up. But it’s too late. Don’t matter now.”

  “What do you mean it’s too late?”

  “I mean the world is already fucked,” he said, spittle flying from his lips. “Excuse my language. Don’t get me going, Josie. Can I call you Josie?”

  She smiled at this. Getting him going was exactly why she was here. She wanted to film it all with her body cam: his crackpot conspiracy theories, his survival methodologies, the rationale behind the design of his bunker, his contingency plans, and his survival strategies for the coming dystopian future. Willie Barnes was widely considered the Sun Tzu of doomsday-prepping culture—a modern mage of survival wisdom. It had taken her six months to get this interview. Six months of plotting and suffering. Willie was a shrewd old tomcat, and she knew from the get-go that none of the typical strategies—flatteries, five minutes of fame, or even cash money—would work on old Willie. Others had tried and failed. Her husband had been the one who came up with the winning idea one night over a KFC dinner.

  “If you want to interview this guy, you first have to win his respect,” Michael said. “You have to show him that you’re worthy of the privilege of interviewing him. That you’re legitimate and your motives are pure. Remember who you’re dealing with here. He doesn’t trust the government. He doesn’t trust the media. He doesn’t trust corporate America. As far as this guy is concerned, everybody is either out to get him or exploit him. You think he’s going to let you, a freelance investigative journalist, just walk into his bat cave, shoot video, and then sell it to HBO? Hell no.”

  “Then what should I do?” she asked, knowing she wasn’t going to like the answer.

  “You need to audition,” Michael said with a sadistic smile. “Tenth Mountain style.”

  The next three months had been hell. Whenever Michael wasn’t on base training for his upcoming deployment, they were in the woods—building shelters, starting fires, making snares, and shooting every projectile-based weapon invented by man. He taught her Morse code, compass navigation, and way-finding techniques. He made her eat wild mushrooms and leeks, forage edible lichens from tree trunks, and dig up bugs and worms for breakfast. He made her bathe naked in freezing-cold streams, defecate in hand-dug latrines, and pull out her own ticks. He even taught her how to make a solar still from two plastic water bottles and forced her to drink her own purified urine. Yes, she now was a member of the small, illustrious club of people who’d drunk their own pee. And she did all this, on film, for Willie.

  When Project PJ (Prepperizing Josie) was complete, she had over a hundred hours of video, which she had professionally distilled and edited into a twelve-minute highlight reel that included a three-second clip of her pale, naked self squealing in a frigid stream that Michael had insisted she include. Then, instead of asking for an interview, she had sent it to Willie—on VHS with a masking-tape label that read, “Audition,” along with her mobile phone number.

  A week went by, and nothing happened.

  Two weeks, and still no call. By then, Michael had deployed to Afghanistan, and she was feeling very much alone and foolish. By week three, the defeatism set in, and she regretted even sending the tape. By week four, she was cursing Willie Barnes’s name for being the impetus to drink her own pee, and by week six, she’d written off the entire idea as a colossal waste of time. At week ten, when the call finally came, it caught her completely off guard:

  “This is Willie Barnes,” the voice said, gruff and hesitant. “You sent me a tape?”

  “Uh, yeah, that was me. Josie Pitcher,” she stammered, not sure why she was so nervous.

  “It’s a good tape,” he said. “Helluva rabbit snare you made.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And I liked the solar still you made with two water bottles. Even the diehards don’t usually . . . well, you know.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why did you send this to me?” he asked, his tone sincere and without sarcasm.

  “Because I want to meet you.”

  “You coulda just asked.”

  “You woulda said no.”

  “That’s true,” he said, chuckling, and then coughed. “I woulda.”

  “So can we meet?”

  “You’re a journalist.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “I do my homework, Miss Pitcher.”

  “I know you do. So do I. That’s why I want to meet you.”

  “I don’t like reporters.”

  “I know, but I’m not a reporter. I’m a journalist.”

  “I didn’t realize there was a difference.”

  “There’s a difference. I assume you’ve seen some of my previous work?”

  “Yeah. I liked the piece you did for Vice on the anti-vax movement in America.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Is that the sort of thing you want to do with me?”

  “Yeah, another in-depth, intimate piece for Vice,” she said, hesitating to add that it was a segment on doomsday preppers.

  “Okay,” he mumbled.

  “Okay what?” she said, not trusting her ears.

  “Okay, I’ll do it . . . but I have conditions.”

  “Um, okay, great. I mean, of course, whatever you want.”

  “Condition number one: I get to sign off on the footage you use. Period. No exceptions.”

  “Done.”

  “Condition two: you come alone.”

  “Okay,” she said, having expected this but still uncomfortable with the idea.

  “Condition three: you can’t know the location of my facility. I’ll pick you up at the lat-lon coordinates of my choosing, and you have to ride with a blindfold there and back. If you won’t agree to this, the deal is off.”

  She hesitated a beat before finally agreeing. This little tidbit of information she’d have to keep from Michael. Thankfully, he was on the other side of the world . . .

  “Well?” Willie said, his voice ripe with impatience.

  “Well what?” she said, snapping back to the present.

  “Can I call you Josie?”

  “Of course,” she said, wondering why he was asking that now. He’d been calling her Josie for ten minutes.

  “You see, Josie, it’s already under way as we speak.”

  “What’s already under way?”

  “I thought you said you did your homework,” he growled.

  She gave him a tight-lipped smile but didn’t take the bait and get defensive.

  “The Sixth Extinction,” he said, spittle landing on the tangled whiskers of his fully gray beard. “The coral reefs around the world are dying. They’re literally being cooked to death. A third of the Great Barrier Reef is dead, and in the next five years, that number will be two-thirds. When the coral reefs are gone, it will kick off an ecological collapse in the world’s oceans. The same thing is happening on land. We’ve wiped out fifty percent of the world’s species in the last forty years. Can you believe that? In forty years we’ve managed to annihilate ecosystems and creatures that have existed for hundreds of thousands of years. People think of nature as a stone fortress, but in reality, it’s a crystal palace—beautiful but fragile. Get too many cracks, and it shatters; then everything comes crashing down. When the Sixth Extinction has run its course, over seventy-five percent of all species on Earth will have gone extinct.”

  She’d not expected this from Willie. Sure, al
l preppers had their particular hot button, but they always came from a well-established pool of dystopian triggers: nuclear war, the next great pandemic, climate change causing global floods, droughts, famine, etcetera. She’d not heard any mention of the Sixth Extinction on the forums and discussion threads she’d researched.

  “So that’s why you’ve built this place, because of the Sixth Extinction?”

  “Were you not listening? Don’t tell me you’re like the rest of them?”

  “The rest of who?”

  “People. Everyone! Everyone who thinks that human beings somehow live in a magical vacuum where our species can flourish while all other species are dying. The Sixth Extinction is coming for us too. We’re not safe. We are not immune!”

  She angled her torso to make sure the body cam had him in frame. “So that’s why you purchased this facility and devoted your life to renovating it . . . in preparation for the Sixth Extinction?”

  “Did Noah wait to start building the ark until after it started raining? No, no, he did not.”

  “Point taken,” she said, noticing he was starting to become agitated.

  “They’ve got plans,” he mumbled, pacing back and forth in front of her. “Secret plans. They’ve tried it before, and they’re going to try it again.”

  She had prepared herself for this sort of thing—for the “crazy talk.” She could see that Willie was getting wound up. There was a difference between getting him going and getting him frazzled and angry. She had to tread carefully, because one misstep—one offensive or misconstrued comment—could flip that switch she knew existed in Willie’s head. And when that happened, they were done. The interview would be over, and he would kick her out. No do-overs. No follow-ups.

  “Who has plans?” she asked cautiously.

  “The government!” he snapped, scratching manically at his beard.

  “The US government?”

  “Of course the US government, you fool. I knew this was a mistake. I’ve already said too much. This was a bad idea . . . a very, very bad idea.”

  “Hey, Willie, how about you tell me more about your aquaponic system?” she said, gently interrupting the diatribe. “Or maybe you could talk to me about your solar rig and energy-storage system.”

  He looked at her, then at the fish. He stopped scratching his beard and began to nod slowly. “Did you know that tilapia is a Nile River fish?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “There’s some folks believe the Egyptians practiced aquaponics thousands of years ago.”

  “I didn’t know that,” she said, nodding politely and suppressing a victorious grin.

  “Aztecs and the ancient Chinese practiced aquaponics as well.” After an awkward beat, he cleared his throat. “Enough about fish. You didn’t come here to talk about fish. C’mon, let’s go grab a cup of hot tea.”

  Phew, dodged a bullet there.

  He led her from the aquaponic shed back to the modest Adirondack-style cabin they’d visited in when she first arrived. As she followed him, she realized that his baggy jeans and flannel shirt belied what must have been a strong, wiry frame beneath. She eyed a pile of freshly cut firewood. An uncut log stood on a massive stump, a long-handled axe leaning next to it at the ready. For a man Willie’s age to maintain such a place, by himself no less, must have been a backbreaking endeavor. From his weathered face, she guessed he had to be midseventies, but Willie had at least another decade, maybe two, of fight left in him.

  He held the cabin door for her, like a gentleman, and she stepped inside. She didn’t realize how much heat the late October chill had sapped from her body until she was in the fire-warmed cabin. She looked around the main room, with its windows on three sides and timber walls. Not exactly the fortress of solitude she’d expected. Where was the armory? Where was the secure communications room with shortwave radio equipment and satellite feeds streaming from all over the world? Where was the ration room with three years’ worth of foodstuffs stacked floor to ceiling and a water-reclamation unit? Where was the secret, impenetrable underground lair? She was beginning to think that maybe the notorious Willie Barnes was nothing more than a myth.

  He handed her a mug of steaming-hot tea.

  “Thank you,” she said, blowing ripples on the surface and then taking a tentative sip. “What is this? I don’t recognize the flavor.”

  “Half and half,” he said.

  “What’s half and half? I’m not familiar with that.”

  He gave her that goofy old-man-talking-to-a-pretty-young-girl grin again. “Well, I brew one cup of black tea, one cup of green tea; then I mix ’em half and half. I can’t stand the taste of green tea, but it’s full of antioxidants. This way I get the taste of black tea and the benefit of green tea. Can’t get too many antioxidants.”

  “I hear blueberries have lots of antioxidants,” she said awkwardly.

  They drank their tea in silence after that, and suddenly she wondered if she’d been wrong about old Willie. Maybe she was the one who’d made the mistake. As she contemplated this, she noticed him staring at her legs. She’d probably erred by selecting jeans a little too far on the slim-fitting side.

  “Yeaaaah, that tape of yours was the only reason I invited you out here,” he said and then started to chuckle. “Seeing you hooting and hollerin’, jumping around butt-ass neked in that stream, got me howling.”

  A creepy tingle chased up her spine. Michael would be furious with her if he knew where she was right now, and he’d be right to be. What had she been thinking coming here alone? And why in God’s name had she agreed to ride blindfolded in his Jeep to get here? She had no fucking idea where she was, no mobile phone coverage, and she was unarmed. What if Willie’s “safeguards” had all been a ploy to get her out here alone so he could kidnap and rape her? An argument broke out in her head:

  He can’t rape you, Joz. He’s over seventy years.

  Of course he can rape me. That’s what Viagra is for, you moron.

  You’re the one who sent him the tape. He didn’t lure you here; you solicited him.

  Doesn’t matter. He’s a crazy old man. I’m a twenty-eight-year-old girl with a body he’s seen naked.

  A rock-hard body that you can kick his ass with.

  Not if I’m unconscious because he put a roofie in my tea.

  “Something wrong with your tea?” he said.

  She realized she was scowling and staring into the mug. “No, it’s fine.”

  “You don’t have to lie on my account. It won’t hurt my feelings. Half and half’s not for everyone. I’m sorry; I probably shoulda asked.” He ran his tongue across his tea-stained teeth and then set his mug down. “Well, you didn’t come all this way to drink tea in my living room. C’mon,” he said, turning away and waving for her to follow. “Let me show you the rest of the facility. If you thought the aquaponics was neat, then you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

  Her heart leaped, and she didn’t know whether she should be ecstatic or turn and run for her life. She watched him walk to a coat closet and open the door to reveal . . . a coat closet. He parted the coats with both hands and ducked under the hanging bar. Before disappearing, he stopped and looked back over his shoulder. “Well, you coming or not?”

  “Coming where?” she said, still clutching her mug with both hands.

  “Into the bunker, of course. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” he said, pushing the false back wall of the closet open to reveal a space behind it. Through the gap, she could just make out red stenciled letters on a steel door:

  RESTRICTED ACCESS—556TH STRATEGIC MISSILE SQUADRON

  SM-65 LAUNCH COMPLEX #9

  CHAPTER 3

  Afghanistan

  Pitcher was only fifteen feet in, and the cave’s ceiling had sloped so low that he was already crawling on his hands and knees. The acrid odor from the grenade he’d detonated was strong here, and he realized that the geometry of the cave he’d imagined was entirely different from the reality of the cave he was now e
xploring. This isn’t a cave, Pitcher decided. It’s a fucking crack.

  At thirty feet in, the ceiling funneled even lower, and he was forced to belly-crawl. The deeper he went, the more he felt consumed. Like Jonah and the whale, he had been swallowed by the mountain. The tunnel was so narrow now that his body blocked all light from the entrance behind. His Kimber in one hand, his SureFire flashlight in the other, he wormed his way forward. Right forearm, left leg, frog kick. Left forearm, right leg, frog kick. His ear was burning now. He resisted the urge to touch the raw, mangled cartilage and kept on squirming.

  He heard something in front of him—a scratching sound. He clicked his flashlight on—the low-light setting, just five lumens. Bright enough to illuminate a two-foot arc in front of him and put his nerves at ease, but not so bright as to wash out his night eyes or betray his position. He exhaled with relief. Nothing lurking in the dark in front of him: no scorpion, no coiled viper, no Taliban terrorist pointing the barrel of a gun in his face.

  He clicked the light off and pushed on, forearm over forearm.

  Two feet, four feet, eight . . . He squirmed into the black.

  Into the silence.

  He could no longer hear the wind. He’d grown so accustomed to the incessant howling in the mountain passes that his subconscious was now craving a windy echo to fill the void. But the only sound was his uniform fabric dragging over rock—like sandpaper on concrete. A nerve-grating sound. He tried to ignore it and pressed on.

  Two feet, four feet, eight . . .

  He lifted his head to look forward and conked the crown of his skull against the rocky ceiling. Fuck, that hurt. He clicked on the light. Nothing but rock and a shrinking, dark void ahead. He clicked the light off. If this tunnel got any smaller, he ran the very real risk of getting stuck. He shooed the thought away. I’m not that stupid. But then another, even more disturbing thought occurred to him. Even if he didn’t get actually physically stuck, he might be effectively stuck already. Belly-crawling was a forward-biased means of locomotion. Could he reverse-crawl all the way back to the opening? No, probably not. Eventually, the crevice would have to open up wide enough that he could turn around.