He knocked on Kate’s door and waited for an answer. Unlike the concrete walls, floors, and ceiling, the doors were molded panel interior, made of composite wood. It was probably one of the few civilian touches in the entire place.
When he didn’t hear anything, he leaned against the door and said, “Kate, it’s Will.”
He waited again, but didn’t hear anything.
He was about to turn away when he heard, “Come in” from the other side.
Her living quarters were identical to his, with bright halogen lamps along the walls. There was a small bed at the far end of the room, a lamp on a nightstand next to it, a chair that didn’t look at all comfortable, and a small writing desk with another lamp perched on top. The halogen lights could be turned on and off with a couple of switches — one at the door, another near the bed. Otherwise it was a Spartan design.
Kate was pulling clothes out a box Ben’s people had supplied them, one of the many spoils of their occasional trips to the surface for supplies. She had changed into new pants and a shirt and was wearing sandals. They made her look comfortable and at home and not the wired, often tensed woman from the road.
“Looks like you’re settling in.”
“I took a shower,” she said.
“How was it?”
“Hot. And great. You should take one, too. You kind of stink.”
He smiled, and was rewarded with one in return.
He wasn’t entirely fooled, though. Kate wasn’t the same. Luke and Ted’s deaths had had a profound effect on her, and he could see the thousand-yard stare lingering in her eyes. She was putting on a brave face for his benefit.
“How are you doing, Kate?”
She looked at him for a moment, as if weighing her answer carefully. After a while, she turned back to her clothes. “You don’t have to worry about me, Will. You brought us here, like you promised. You can stop worrying about us now. About me.”
That caught him by surprise, and he didn’t know how to respond.
“I think I’m going to get some sleep,” she said. “They have sleeping pills in the Infirmary. I think I’m finally going to take some of those.” She paused, as if waiting for him to respond. When he didn’t, she said, “Thanks for coming.”
“Sure,” he said.
He took the hint and left.
He walked down the hallway toward his room in silence, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened with Kate.
Will needed something to take his mind off Kate, and found Ben on his way back to Operations. He fell in alongside the older man.
“You settled in already?” Ben asked.
“Not exactly. Where you headed?”
“I’m just doing my rounds, looking in on everyone before I close up shop for the night.”
“Mind if I tag along?”
“You didn’t take that shower like I suggested, huh?” He sniffed Will. “Maybe I was being too subtle.”
“Not in this lifetime.”
Ben nodded at Will’s bandaged hands. “You should get those looked at. That’s what the Infirmary’s for.”
“Later. Tell me about the people here. About this place.”
“There were ten of us in the beginning, but that ballooned to twenty-four. I guess a lot of people in town already knew about what Harold Campbell was building out here. It only took four years of year-round construction crews coming and going, after all.”
“How did you know about it?”
Ben chuckled and slapped his right leg, where he wore the brace. “Campbell wanted someone with military experience to do security over his facility until he needed it. You probably already know this, seeing as how you spent time here building this place, but Campbell was a little paranoid.”
“A little?” Will grinned.
“Okay, a lot,” Ben chuckled. “He refused to hire anyone that even smelled like a potential government agent. So he hired me. He figured a gimpy ex-Ranger would never be an active government spy. It helped, of course, that besides the gimp, I could still do everything he needed.”
“You were the one who brought these people here.”
“I brought nine, just the people I knew in town. The kid in the Control Room is one of them. Rick’s mother rented me the house where I stayed. She was a nice lady.”
“Was?”
“She didn’t make it. Not many people did. There are enough horror stories to last you a lifetime if you ask around.”
“I have a few myself.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“Campbell gave you the key to the place?”
Ben pulled out a plain rope necklace from underneath his shirt. It was nothing special except for the circular pendant at the end, the size of a small quarter with a pronounced bump in the center. It looked like an elegant button.
“In case the facility needed work,” Ben said, “or Campbell needed to make a quick entrance, he wanted someone here to be ready to open the Door for him. This thing is like a key, except it works by remote. There isn’t actually a key, key. Besides this pendant, the only other way to open the Door is the big switch in the Control Room.”
“Did he make it? Campbell?”
“Never heard from him. That day, or the days after. It’s ironic. Or tragic. Depending on how you look at it.”
“He would probably say tragic.”
“He would probably say that, yeah. You know, for a crazy, paranoid bastard, he really wasn’t all that bad of a boss. He paid me a pretty decent wage — way more than I could have earned doing anything else, especially with this gimpy leg — for doing almost nothing for two years. I heard he paid the construction people pretty well, too.”
“He did,” Will nodded. “The guy who gave me the job said the work was going to be enough to sustain his company for years.”
“You’re talking about Tom Lerner, the ex-Ranger.”
“That’s him.”
“You think he’s still around?”
“If he was, wouldn’t he be here? He knows about this place.”
“I never thought about it that way,” Ben said.
They entered Operations and walked for a few more minutes until they reached a steel door marked Turbine Room.
Will’s teeth began chattering.
Ben twisted the handle. “This is where the magic happens. Try not to splooge in your pants.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Ben led him inside a cavernous room lined with catwalks on top, circling a large steel turbine that took up nearly half of the space. The catwalks wrapped around the circular, almost barrel-shaped machine, the source of the massive hum that vibrated through the facility. He had to crane his neck to see the very top of the machine, which towered over them.
He could hear the turbine blades spinning inside the machine and could almost imagine the rush of water flowing from Lake Livingston, racing underneath their feet, churning out electricity through the generator shaft. Years ago, he had managed to talk one of the construction crews working on the turbine into showing him the blueprints, but to see the behemoth at work and in person took his breath away, even if every inch of his body was shaking from the vibrations.
Ben called to someone. A tall, gangly man in overalls leaned down from one of the catwalks above them. He looked to be in his fifties, with short, cropped hair and eyeglasses that had a crack across one of the lenses. “Peter, this is Will! New arrival!”
Peter waved down to them and shouted back something that got lost in the roar of the turbine. Ben shook his head and tapped Will on the shoulder and pointed to the door. They waved to Peter, who returned it, shouting something else Will couldn’t hear.
Back in the relatively quiet confines of the hallway, Ben said, “I don’t know how he does it. A minute in there and I can barely feel my teeth.”