Chapter Fifteen
Liis
By day five, the bunker had begun to feel less like a safeguard and more like a test of endurance. We stayed ready to deploy until bedtime, pants on, boots either laced or set within reach. Nothing was ever fully set aside.
Only Thomas and I kept sidearms now that they’d been returned.
We kept them close even when we slept, secured out of reach of the children.
It was an exception no one questioned. If anything, it made the adults feel more at ease.
Essentials for those of us who would go topside when called was already consolidated into go bags—water, med kits, radios, flashlights, spare batteries, a few stripped-down essentials—packed and staged by the exit so nothing had to be searched for under pressure.
Sleep came in short rotations, light and easily broken.
Time stretched without daylight to measure it, reduced to updates, sounds overhead, and the new routine of movement filtering through the corridors.
Meals were quick and functional, and even the children’s playtime followed rigid routines, each session ending with drills that trained them to stop instantly and move to the galley at the first alert.
By each nightfall, anticipation was high, but most of us found ways to keep busy.
Olive created learning games for the kids, and Bodhi worked out and trained with Thomas, Trenton, and Travis.
Taylor and Tyler treated the bunker like a structure fire waiting to happen, mapping exits, clearing pathways, and making sure nothing blocked a fast evacuation.
Still, tension hovered. It wasn’t panic, or even short tempers.
Whatever it was, though, felt slower than either and far more corrosive.
The strain had settled into the seams of the bunker, wearing us down in ways that didn’t always show until someone was noticeably annoyed over nothing or stood too long staring at the blast door as if they could will it open.
The air still moved, the lights still cycled through their programmed dimming to mimic a normal day and night, meals—although not as feast-like as our first dinner—came on time.
Children were fed, washed, entertained, settled, then entertained again when settling didn’t take.
The system worked, and yet, that was part of the problem.
It worked so well that there was no purpose except the waiting itself.
By then, every adult in the bunker had asked some version of the same question, either out loud or with their expression.
How much longer?
Worse, the answer would only come in the form of violence, explosions, and screaming.
I sat on the edge of the sectional in the common area with Stella against my chest, one hand slowly patting her back as she played absently with the collar of my shirt, quietly fighting sleep.
Around us, the family had spread out in loose pockets, each group managing the confinement differently.
Falyn had a permanent expression of exasperation on her face.
Taylor orbited her, keeping the children from setting her off.
He’d sit with her for five minutes at a time before standing again, herding Hollis and Hadley, sitting down again in an attempt to reassure her or discuss their reconciliation.
Tyler and Ellison had taken Gavin on a tour of the military vehicles for the umpteenth time, trying to seem just as excited about them as the first. Trenton, who as a tattoo artist usually tolerated forced stillness better than most, had begun a nightly routine of pushups, sit ups, then jogging the length of the bunker, stopping only to watch the corridor toward the blast doors between sets as if he expected someone to appear and tell us we were free to breathe fresh air again.
Across the room, Thomas sat forward in one of the chairs, elbows on his knees, attention fixed on a conversation with Bodhi and Olive he wasn’t fully invested in.
Travis was weighing in, trying to keep the topic light, absently reaching over to touch Abby every few minutes as she rocked their son to sleep.
“This is ridiculous,” Trenton said, and loudly. “You two got your sidearms back, and for what? Three days and nothing. No movement, no attack, no breach, no anything. At some point, this stops being precaution and starts being prison.”
Thomas sighed, sitting back. “It’s not prison if it keeps you alive. No news is good news, Trent. Try to remember that.”
Tyler stepped closer, dissatisfied. “Trent’s right. We’re alive, but we ain’t living, brother.”
“Semantics,” Thomas muttered.
“Since when have you been an expert on either, Tommy?” Trenton asked, his hands perched on his hips, his chest still heaving from his run.
That got a few tired, nervous laughs, only to break the tension because we all knew Trenton wasn’t joking.
“Enough,” I said. “This helps nothing and no one.”
After a beat, Abby spoke words none of us expected. “I’m so sorry,” she said, staring at the floor.
“Pidge, don’t, we’ve talked about this,” Travis said, scooting closer.
“No. No, I need to say it.” She scanned the room, her gaze landing on each of us before finally settling on her youngest, Carter, playing at her feet.
“None of you would’ve ever known about the Carlisis if it weren’t for me.
Travis wouldn’t have worked for Benny. Benny wouldn’t have threatened me to taunt Travis, Travis wouldn’t have…
did what he did. The Carlisis wouldn’t have opened fire on Jim’s front lawn.
” Her eyes glossed over. “Jim might still be with us. We wouldn’t have missed out on Olive’s last two birthdays, Christmases.
We wouldn’t be angry at Thomas for making a call deep down we all know he had to make.
The kids wouldn’t be down here hiding from—”
“You’re right. They wouldn’t be,” I said.
She looked up, and Travis shot me a glare.
“Because they wouldn’t exist. You can’t have one without the other. None of us would trade your children, the love and life you and Travis have built. You’re the backbone of this family, Abby. Your father got mixed up with them, not you.”
Travis’s expression softened, and Abby sniffed, wiping at her nose with the back of her sleeve. Travis pulled her in, pressing a kiss to her hair, holding her there while his brothers and their wives nodded in agreement.
“See?” Travis said, trying to lighten the mood. “Told you so.”
Falyn crossed one leg beneath the other and looked toward Thomas. “So what, um, what are the chances they’ve retreated? The people outside the perimeter?”
“If that were the case, we’d be top side,” he said.
She still wasn’t satisfied. “Is there a chance they might?”
“You want the truth?” Thomas asked.
Everyone nodded.
Thomas looked over his shoulder to make sure the older kids weren’t listening.
“No,” he replied, his voice low. “They’re staging.
Organizing and positioning to attack us.
In my opinion, they have no intention of taking on the entire militia.
They’ll try to distract them, send in small groups, get as many of us as they can, and retreat.
They’re counting on us all being in one spot once it gets noisy, which is why half of us should go topside to help the militia. ”
The women collectively shivered, those who were holding children held them tighter, and no one had much to say after that.
Stella nestled against me, running hot and sluggish in the way only a sleepy toddler could be.
I pressed my lips to the top of her head, breathing her in.
She smelled clean and faintly sweet, of soap and lotion from her recent bath.
Around us, the room carried the worn-in signs of containment: blankets folded and unfolded again, toys collected into corners and dragged back out, coffee cups abandoned on side tables, adults speaking too quietly because every child under twelve was one bad minute away from becoming everyone’s problem.
Olive left us for a moment, then came back to sit on the rug near the coffee table, spreading a deck of cards between her and Bodhi.
She folded one knee beneath her, her head slightly bowed as she sorted the hand she’d dealt, her face composed in a way that reminded me of Abby when she was staring at the aces and eights in her hand.
She looked softer with Stella. Most people did, but Olive was protective of her in a way that bordered on a mother’s love.
With cards in her hands, her expression was very different.
Bodhi put his cards down. “Hear me out. If nothing’s happening, maybe they could let us outside in shifts.”
“Who’s they?” Taylor asked.
Bodhi shrugged. “Marcel. The people with the guns. Pick one.”
“They’re going to hit us any day now,” I said. “What do we do if that group is caught topside when the shit hits the fan and can’t get back? Do the rest of us leave the safety of the bunker to retrieve them?”
He looked over at me and shrugged one shoulder. “It was just a suggestion.”
“It becomes a plan the second someone here likes it,” Thomas said.
“Do you?” he asked.
“No,” we said in unison.
“It’s not a bad plan,” Trenton grumbled, mostly to himself.
Stella’s fingers slowed against my shirt and her head relaxed back. I transitioned her into a cradled position, feeling Thomas’s gaze before I even looked at him. When I did, his expression had switched from annoyed to unreadable, which meant he was holding something back.
I knew the signs better than anyone. His posture had changed by degrees, not enough for anyone else to notice. He became more economical with his words, less because he had nothing to say and more because he sensed something.
I leaned into his ear. “What is it?”
“I don’t know…” he trailed off, trying to decipher it himself. “I just feel something’s o—”
A sound began to pulse through the bunker. Not a siren—more like a muted sonar ping—threading through the space in a low, controlled pulse, subtle enough that it didn’t spike panic on contact, but unmistakable once it registered.