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  “You weren’t kidding,” she said. “Looks like you made your own private Trader Joe’s here. Walk me through the logic of having a trading post inside your hidden bunker. Seems like it defeats the purpose of everything you’ve accomplished here.”

  “After the culling, a new postapocalyptic society will emerge. Paper currency will be worthless. The only things of value will be gold, silver, and tangible goods. Commerce will be based on bartering, just like in the old days. Twenty years into the apocalypse, do you know how valuable a bottle of Jack Daniel’s will be?”

  “Probably not as coveted as those Tampax you have over there,” she said with a sarcastic smile, cocking an eyebrow at the shelf.

  “My point exactly,” he replied. “All the basic everyday necessities we take for granted will become incredibly valuable.”

  “Agreed, but what good is it to possess all this commodity wealth if you’re stuck down here all alone?”

  “Well, maybe if you’re lucky, I’ll let you in when you come knocking on my door after hell starts reigning on Earth . . . Then you can inherit all of this.” Wistfully, he added, “Diane and me never did get a chance to have children.”

  “So, does that mean you’re not going to blindfold me on the way back?”

  “I haven’t decided,” he grumbled.

  Her stomach growled. She’d known this was going to be a long day, so she’d stuffed herself before leaving, but her metabolism was in overdrive, and she already needed to eat again.

  “You hungry?” he asked, watching her eye the vacuum-packed bags of nuts and jerky.

  “Yeah, I’m famished,” she said, turning to meet his gaze. She gave him the human version of puppy-dog eyes.

  “Little thing like you can’t eat much,” he said, walking to the shelf. “You like almonds?”

  “Yeah, but, uh, I probably should go for the jerky. Is that okay?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Wanna try buffalo jerky? It has more protein and less cholesterol than beef.”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  He ripped open a vacuum-sealed pouch and handed it to her.

  “Thanks,” she said again and popped a piece into her mouth. It wasn’t as hard and chewy as she had expected. “This is good, and it’s not like eating shoe leather.”

  “Yeah, I make it myself. It’s all about breaking down the meat fibers and managing the moisture content.”

  “Well, it’s really good,” she said, savoring the salty teriyaki flavor.

  He gave her time to finish the package then waved for her to follow him back to the stairs. She stuffed the empty package in her left jean pocket and headed to the spiral staircase. She found the tight radius and narrow treads of the spiral staircase incredibly awkward to navigate, but eventually her feet found a rhythm. While they descended, the entire silo seemed to groan and creak, and she couldn’t help but wonder if it was nothing more than the harmless protestations of tired, old metal or if the entire dilapidated structure was one footfall away from catastrophic collapse.

  For all the butterflies it was causing in her stomach, Willie seemed utterly unfazed, chatting away as they descended. The Atlas F silo was, at the time of its construction, the strongest and most expensive concrete structure ever built by man. The concrete that was used to make the silo walls had been mixed with epoxy resin and embedded with over six hundred tons of steel rebar, making the foundation capable of withstanding external pressure up to two hundred pounds per square inch—a force equivalent to five-hundred-mile-per-hour winds. At the top of the silo, the walls were an incredible nine feet thick, but they tapered down to a paltry two feet thick at level two, a design criteria maintained thereafter all the way to the bottom. Willie explained how the Atlas missile had sat on a launch platform that functioned like an elevator capable of lifting it completely out of the silo for launch. He described how the missile used a liquid-based propellant system, with RP-1—which was essentially kerosene—as the rocket fuel and liquid oxygen as the oxidizer. The liquid oxygen was maintained in pressurized storage tanks on level eight. To make the missile ready for launch, the missile’s tank had to be purged of nitrogen and filled with LOX. The time delay to accomplish this, along with the dangers and complexities of storing and handling liquid propellants, was the primary reason for the short-lived nature of the Atlas missile program. Advancements in solid rocket fuels used by the Minuteman ICBM, which had been in parallel development, led to the cancellation of the Atlas missile program and the closure of all SM-65 sites by 1965.

  “Wait a second,” she said as the gravity of his words sunk in. “You’re telling me that the government built dozens of these Atlas silos over a five-year period and then shut them all down a year later?”

  “Seventy-two of the Atlas F sites. Plus fifty-seven more when you count the Atlas D and E sites. Incredible, isn’t it? The weapon system was already obsolete by the time it was serviceable.”

  “How much money did they waste?”

  “I tried to figure that out once,” he said in between breaths. “I estimate in today’s dollars, you’re looking at about fifty billion.”

  She shook her head at this figure but then thought of the War on Terror and the trillions of dollars wasted on America’s “longest war” and the subsequent occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and suddenly the cost of the Atlas missile program didn’t seem so egregious. Thinking of Afghanistan made her thoughts turn to her husband. She wondered how Michael was doing. She wondered if he was safe on base or if they had him out on some extended patrol. She hadn’t heard from him in two weeks, which indicated the latter and always left her nervous and unsettled.

  Last night she’d had a nightmare that Michael was drowning. Trapped under the ice in a frozen pond, he was looking up at her with the strangest expression on his face. As bubbles streamed from the corners of his purple lips, he was smiling. She’d been there, on top of the ice. She’d screamed his name and pounded her fists against the frozen barrier between them, but the ice was thick and impenetrable. She’d scanned the surface, frantically searching for the hole he’d fallen through to pull him out, but she couldn’t find it and was forced to watch him drown. She’d woken bolt upright, gasping for air. After calming herself in the dark, she’d pulled the covers up to her neck and hugged Michael’s pillow. She inhaled deeply through her nose, craving his scent, but his olfactory ghost had already faded from the unwashed pillowcase. This had made her feel profoundly lonely and resentful toward the Army for sending her groom to the other side of the world. Army wives didn’t get a vote. Neither did soldiers for that matter. The military, defender of freedom and the American way, was a juggernaut, indifferent and unrelenting. There were only three choices: get on board for the ride, get run over, or get left behind.

  Willie Barnes had long since been left behind. That thought made her realize that she’d tuned out her host for the last two levels. “What was that you just said?” she asked, a beat into an awkward pause.

  “I said, ‘How are you doing back there?’”

  “Oh, I’m doing fine,” she said. “Finally got the hang of these stairs.”

  “Going down is the easy part; the trip back up is a bitch. By the way, the staircase ends at level seven. Only way to reach level eight is by ladder. You okay with that?”

  “Sure, unless we can see everything worth seeing from here,” she said, stepping off the spiral staircase onto the metal-grating floor of level seven. As she walked clear of the stairwell, a drop of liquid plinked her on the top of her head. She reflexively touched the wetness with her fingers and inspected her fingertip.

  “It’s just water,” Willie said. “Some of the fittings and tank connections leak.”

  Now that he had said that, her ears tuned to the sound of multiple water droplets pinging off the metal framework on different levels with different frequencies, creating a rainforest sound effect. She inhaled, taking in the smell of the place, and talked into the camera microphone, memorializing the mélange of odors: “Fish
and rust, earth and must.”

  “What did you say?” Willie said, suddenly whipping around to face her.

  “Oh, nothing. Just recording an observation.”

  “No, no, I heard you. You were speaking in verse,” he said, clutching at a silver pendant on a chain around his neck that she’d not noticed before.

  “I wasn’t speaking in verse.”

  “Don’t lie to me,” he said, practically shouting at her. “I heard a rhyme; don’t tell me I didn’t.”

  “Oooookay.”

  “Does she talk to you?”

  Josie took a step back and folded her arms across her chest. “Does who talk to me?”

  “The other Josie,” he growled, taking a step toward her.

  “The other Josie? I don’t understand, Willie.”

  He eyed her for a beat and then waved a hand at her dismissively. “Forget it.”

  “All right,” she said, keeping her gaze fixed on him as he paced away, mumbling. She strained to hear what he was saying—something about a woman named Eve and another named Diane. She watched him walk toward the center of the platform and stop at the edge of the grating, where he stared down into a reflective pool of black water.

  What the hell was that all about? she wondered, eyeing him nervously.

  “I’m sorry about that,” he said after an awkward pause. “I’m not going to lie to you, Josie. I, uh, struggle with PTSD from time to time. Certain phrases and words set me off.”

  “It’s okay,” she said, but the goose bumps on her arms still hadn’t seen fit to relax. She wanted to believe him, but something in her gut told her there was more to the story than PTSD.

  “So, uh, this is level seven,” he said, smiling and falling back into tour-guide mode. “One level up from the bottom of the silo. It was where the instruments and controls for the gas systems were located. The tanks were all kept on level eight.”

  “Is that water down there at the bottom?” she asked, moving toward the gaping square hole in the middle of the platform but angling away from Willie to maintain a cautious separation.

  “Yeah, there’s a collection sump down there. It catches the leaks from the aquaponics beds, and I get a little bit of groundwater in leakage too.”

  She nodded and tilted her head back to stare up the great center shaft where an ICBM had once been. Grow lights shone in a patchwork through the metal grating of the crib structure above. A slight haze hung in the air from the humidity. She lowered her gaze and as she looked around, she noticed that the decking and structural supports were warped and charred. The damage extended to level six above as well. On the opposite side of the silo, a huge area of decking between levels eight and seven was missing, as if it had been carved out by some giant ice-cream scooper. Pipes, brackets, and cable trays were also warped and cut. She turned to Willie.

  “Was there some sort of explosion or fire down here?” she asked, gesturing to the empirical evidence all around them.

  “No, no. What you’re seeing is just the aftermath of the decommissioning process,” he said dismissively. “It’s easier to remove the tanks by cutting out the decking first.”

  “But this area is carved out in an almost perfect sphere,” she said, walking around. When she reached the edge of the scooped-out deck, she knelt and touched one of the deformed metal struts. “It looks melted . . .”

  “Well, Ms. Pitcher, not much left to see down here. We should probably wrap things up and head topside.”

  The distinct change in his demeanor and the reversion to calling her by the more formal Ms. Pitcher were not lost on her. She sensed him clamming up, and she wondered if she’d said or done something wrong. Probably not, she decided. Most likely the excitement of playing tour guide to his first visitor in years had worn off and was now supplanted by the anxiety caused by her presence. His need to boast and be praised was now usurped by the primal and paranoid desire to be rid of her. She had anticipated this behavior; it happened with almost every interview subject after she’d successfully unlocked and gained access to the intimate—to the secrets they were dying to share but then regretted telling afterward. She didn’t know if there was a name for the phenomenon, but she called it the narcissist’s stopwatch: Time’s up. Interview’s over. Time for you to go and leave me alone. In her experience, there was little that could be done once the switch had flipped, at least in this session. The window of opportunity was closing, and all she could do now was take in as much details and information as possible before she was forced to leave.

  She climbed the spiral stairs, this time taking the lead at Willie’s insistence. The climb up was exhausting, considerably more difficult than the way down. Although he didn’t ask for a break, when she heard him getting winded, she said she needed a rest and stopped for a respite on level four. When he’d caught his breath, she resumed the ascent to level two. Before he shooed her out of the silo, she gazed upward one last time. A massive, round tarp hung suspended overhead, stretched taut by radial stanchions.

  “What’s that tarp for?” she asked.

  “To control leaks,” he said.

  “Leaks from what?”

  “The silo clamshell doors above. They leak pretty bad when it rains.”

  “Are they operational?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t want them to open. But even if I did, they’re so massive, they require a hydraulic system to operate.”

  “When was the last time they were opened?”

  “Probably in 1965, when the Air Force removed the missile and decommissioned the facility,” he said, gazing at her with impatient eyes. “C’mon, time to go.”

  Like a reluctant child, she lagged behind him—walking at half speed, filming every last detail she could without being overtly conspicuous about it. She followed him through the series of blast doors and the utility tunnel leading back to the launch control center. As he started to climb the stairs toward the level one landing, she paused. “Can I see level two of the LCC?” she asked, taking a step toward the open door leading into the lower level—the only space she’d yet to explore with him.

  “Level two is my personal living quarters and the armory. Not much to see in there except a messy cot and a gun locker,” he said.

  She acknowledged him with a nod, but instead of complying, she took another step toward the threshold. She could now see into the round room and noted that, like the level above, it was in a state of ongoing renovation. “Is there a bathroom I can use down here?” she called over her shoulder, taking a step into his personal living quarters.

  As with level one, he’d removed most of the divider walls in the donut-shaped chamber, leaving the floor plan wide open. To her left, she spied his sleeping quarters. Sleeping quarters was the appropriate descriptor, as opposed to bedroom, because there was nothing comfortable or cozy about it. His bed was nothing more than a folding cot with a sleeping bag and pillow strewn on top. For a bedside table, he used a stack of metal ammunition boxes with a wooden board resting on top. Along the curving back wall stood an IKEA PAX four-door wardrobe she recognized instantly because she owned the exact same one. Beside the wardrobe stood a walk-in gun cage, constructed from plate steel and heavy-duty wire-mesh panels. Inside there were enough weapons to arm a decent-size militia. She counted six AR-15s stacked neatly in a vertical rack, four AK-47s in their own rack, and a half dozen other assault rifles she didn’t know by name displayed on peg hooks. A dozen pistols of every size and caliber were laid out on a series of downward-sloping shelves. She spied a rack of shotguns, hunting rifles with optics packages, compound bows, and an expensive-looking crossbow. Finally, standing up on end and leaning into the corner was something that looked like a bazooka out of a WWII movie.

  “Oh my God,” she said through her breath, having never seen a private collection of weapons like this in one place before. “If Michael could see this.”

  Then something else caught her attention—some
thing even more interesting than the armory. A shiny silver suit hung suspended on a hook from the ceiling. The full-body suit, with gauntlet-style gloves and Moon Boots, looked like something straight out of an old science fiction movie. The outer layer of material appeared to be some sort of woven metallic fabric. The large dome-shaped helmet had a curved, rectangular Plexiglas faceplate with what appeared to be wire mesh fixed inside. The bottom of the helmet had a drape-style skirt that extended down to cover the neck and top of the shoulders. The outfit reminded her of the flame-resistant suits worn by stuntmen, except this one had an intricate network of copper wires affixed to the outside.

  What the hell is that?

  Willie’s hand clamped down on her shoulder from behind, sending a shock wave of alarm through her entire body. She jerked free of the grip and whirled to face him, but her resolve to give him a dressing down fractured to pieces under the weight of his gaze. The strange look on his face set her knees to trembling, and in that moment, she realized she had grossly underestimated him. He was old, yes, but as he stood in front of her now, she noticed his square, broad shoulders and his muscular forearms. He had at least a forty-pound weight advantage, and he was probably carrying a concealed weapon. Despite her youth, despite her level of fitness, she acknowledged the grim reality that he could overpower her.

  She took a step back.

  “There’s an old expression; you might have heard it,” Willie growled. “Curiosity killed the cat.”