III
During the rumble he'd found his support in the wall and the heavy metal railing he leaned on.
Through the darkness came shouts and unintelligible clamor from the locked room.
The dark was heavy, oppressive, and it pressed on the soul.
Nick gripped the railing hard, as if his life depended on it.
He felt movement and a small hand that grabbed his forearm.
Immediately after, a small body pressed against him in the total darkness and relative silence of the staircase.
Not letting go of the railing, Nick wrapped his left arm around the girl's shoulders, trying at least that way to calm both her and himself.
Human touch is an incredible thing, and he felt the dark was no longer so deep and didn't press so heavily on his head.
The rumble had stopped. Somewhere above him came the sound of plaster striking the stone staircase.
And then light appeared. Weak, red, but liberating light nonetheless.
The old bulb halfway up the circular staircase flickered briefly, but then began to glow steadily, lighting the walls and stairs above them with a muted gleam.
Only in the imagination could that be called good lighting, but after the total darkness they'd been in, it felt as if he were in the loveliest moonlight in the middle of a beautiful night, under a sky full of stars.
The cheerful clamor from the locked foyer spoke of the mood, but he assumed it wouldn't last long.
He could only hope Erik had managed to find Ana, who would know what to do with the people.
The people were a problem, a big problem.
And if they so much as suspected there were thousands of them inside and decided to do something, no one would be able to hold them back, not Ana nor her band of bikers. There was no time.
Minutes later he was already in the security room. He found Tomi busy with the cables under the console full of now-black electronics screens. Surprisingly, he noticed that the old computers and servers were still on and steadily humming and scrolling data unknown to Nick.
"Tomi, any news?" he asked, going up to one of the screens and casting a glance at the heaps of numbers spinning endlessly.
"I have good news, bad news, and very bad news. Which do you want to hear first?"
"Give me the good, I need some good news, because down there it's about to become a madhouse," Nick turned his gaze from the screen and moved closer to his friend, who had finally pulled himself out from under the console.
"The good news is I managed to get the P.A. system working. And I figured out how it works," Tomi pointed to the microphone set on the console.
Nick brightened. A working P.A. could calm the panicked people on the floors below him. A tool for spreading information and, above all, a tool of control. That was very good news. He looked at his friend:
"Okay. And what's the bad news?" he asked.
Tomi paced, fiddling with the tech, but he clearly wasn't having much luck with his electronics. Finally he turned to Nick and shrugged.
"All the electronics are fried," he nodded toward the humming apparatus behind them. "Except for these ancient things, everything modern is effectively destroyed," Tomi sank into the chair in front of the console in defeat.
Nick leaned on the console and pressed a few buttons. The screens stayed stubbornly black. Not even the stand-by lights were glowing; everything looked dead.
"How? What happened?" he asked, running his gaze over the instruments, but since there was no change, he looked at their faces.
Tomi took off his glasses and produced a paper tissue from somewhere.
He began wiping them, sinking into thought.
Nika leaned against the concrete column and watched the two friends carefully.
The only sound in the room was the hum of the ancient tech, and in the reddish light the room had a dangerous feel, with dark corners of threatening gloom.
Finally, Tomi put his glasses on his nose and announced quietly as he tucked the tissue into his pocket:
"That rumble that nearly brought everything down," he waved around, indicating the still-visible little clouds of fine dust floating about.
They both nodded. "Well, that, I think, was the thermal shock produced when atoms split in a nuclear explosion. It releases a massive electromagnetic pulse that fries every piece of electronics within the blast radius. Which brings us to the even worse news."
He paused, aware of their attention. "By all appearances, the outside world — or at least Zagreb — is no more."
Needlessly and theatrically he spread his arms.
Nick absorbed the news and unconsciously took the dead phone out of his pants.
He looked at his friend questioningly, and Tomi only nodded.
With a heavy sigh, he set the now-useless device on the console with all the rest of the dead electronics.
For a moment his apartment flashed in his mind; his face darkened.
No, he mustn't think about that — he forced himself to stay in the reality of the current situation.
He must under no circumstances show emotion!
With a faintly trembling hand, he wiped the tiny beads of sweat from his forehead.
In the background, Nika was busy with her phone, while Tomi sat mutely in the chair, waiting for something or someone.
"So, it blew somewhere close?" Nick asked his friend.
Tomi nodded in confirmation. Nick went on:
"And us? Are we safe?"
"This is an atomic shelter. It was built to withstand a blast and protect the people inside."
"And radiation?"
"So far I haven't noticed any movement on these gadgets…" Tomi waved a hand toward the humming machines, "and even if there were radiation, I'm convinced something would signal it with some kind of alarm."
"And us? Can we get out?" Nick kept probing.
"You mean outside?" Tomi looked at him.
"Yes."
Tomi thought for a moment and then explained patiently.
"An EMP, or the pulse that destroys electronic chips, exists within a certain radius around the explosion. That means it blew very close to this place, and going outside would make you literally glow in the dark for the few minutes of life you'd have left."
His words sounded inexorable, and for a few moments the two of them digested what he'd said.
"So what now?" defeated, in a faint voice, Nick asked the room.
He got no answer, and they spent some time lost in thought. Nick didn't want to, or wouldn't let himself, think about the catastrophe that had befallen them. But somehow, deep inside, he thanked God and all the saints that he was still here, still breathing, still alive.
"How big is it, Tomi?" he finally asked.
"What do you mean?" Tomi looked at him questioningly.
"How big is the catastrophe? Is everything destroyed, or?" He didn't go on — there were too many questions, so he just looked at his friend questioningly.
"Well, from what I managed to catch before it all went to hell, I think it's global," Tomi was terse and inadequate, still in shock.
"What's global?" Nika chimed in. "As far as I know, this military crap was conventional. When on earth did they start destroying the world?" she sat down on the support of a server that hummed quietly.
Tomi looked at her sadly. Which reminded him that he still had tissue up his nose.
He pulled the paper out of his aching nostrils and sniffled.
He was getting used to Nika and had better control over his reactions.
Which somewhat surprised him, because with Ana it had literally taken him weeks before her scent stopped bothering him.
"It was conventional, right up until some fool decided it was easier to press a few buttons and screw the world," he replied sadly.
Nika asked no further questions, but sank into thoughts of her own.
Tomi watched her, and somewhere deep in his heart a sorrow arose, because such a girl was so far above his rank that even the lustful thoughts he'd normally have toward attractive girls didn't spoil the purity of her figure as she sat there so pensive, with a sad expression,
beside the humming machine.
"Are you able to fix the video feed or anything from outside?" Nick broke the silence.
Tomi looked at him blankly.
"Which part of 'the electronics are fried' don't you understand, Nick? Everything's fried, and it'll take me hours, if not days, to fix something and get it into some kind of working order."
"So how come this junk heap around us is humming and working?" Nick wouldn't let up.
"Probably because it's all analog-wired and because it has cathode-ray tubes and, of course, because the microchips are somewhere…" Tomi stopped explaining when an unreal idea struck him.
Tomi rose from the chair, went to the nearest server, tapped a few commands, meanwhile muttering something quietly into his beard.
Nick looked at the girl, who shrugged and settled in to wait calmly for the explanation he knew they'd get as soon as Tomi worked out the basics in his head. And it didn't take long.
"That's it…" He looked at them with a new fire in his eyes.
"The main database is protected. Somewhere in the shelter. Don't you understand?"
He looked at them, but they only shook their heads.
Tomi got a slightly frustrated look. "Like this…"
he stood beneath the ventilation opening.
"This works, so something controls the ventilation and says the air has to be filtered."
Then he pointed at the computers unconsciously humming around them.
"Something switched on all the machines when that same something detected the nuclear detonations, and we're in an atomic shelter."
Then he pointed toward the changing room behind them.
"We're guaranteed to have water in the toilet, and the backup lighting works as it should," he waved his arms in a wide circle, finishing.
"This is an atomic shelter built at the height of the Cold War, with technology that was the very best of the best back then, and the key to all of it," he finally jabbed a finger at the elevator doors, "is over there."
They both looked in the direction of the elevator, finally understanding.
"So the core of the system must be somewhere in the shelter, and you can reach it by this elevator?" Nika stood and headed toward the elevator.
"That's right," Tomi crossed his arms over his chest with satisfaction.