Criss Cross

Chapter 38

I bolted down two flights of stairs and stopped, breathing hard, knowing I would not be able to get out of the bunker before Rivers got to the hatch.

I desperately did not want this to go sideways. Will he notice the padlock isn’t closed? I thought as I pulled out my pistol. Will he come searching for me?

My breathing slowed and I heard metal scraping against metal. The padlock being opened? Or snapped shut, sealing me in here?

The hatch wheel turned. I eased deep into the shadows on the landing.

The hatch swung open. No flashlight beam. And no sounds for several long, gut-wrenching moments.

“Done playing games,” Rivers said in a low, gravelly voice, slurring his words. “Time for follow-through. Time to commit, baby.”

I crouched and looked down through the risers of the metal staircase into the hallway that led out. Was there someone with him?

“Time to commit, baby,” he said again, and I heard the hatch swing shut. “Only those who commit get the goodies in life.”

No response. I decided he was probably talking to himself. He chuckled, and I knew for certain he was drunk when he began walking in a wobbly line toward the staircase.

I saw the barrel of his shotgun first and raised my pistol ever so slowly.

The faint glow of the radioactive tritium in my rear and front sights found Rivers. He paused at the staircase, glanced upward, and for a terrible moment I thought for sure I was going to have to shoot defensively.

But then he looked away and chuckled again. “Everything you dreamed, baby. Here it is, yours for the taking...” He trailed off as if he’d fallen into a trance and stood there, unsteady on his feet.

Then Rivers threw back his head and howled like a wolf two or three times before stopping and beginning to laugh hysterically at some inner joke. When the echoes of it died, he leaned over the railing of the staircase and called down into his underworld.

“Can you hear me down there, Maxine?” he shouted. “Can you?”

He paused and listened, as did I. But no sound came back up the shaft.

Rivers set the gun against the rail, reached into his pants pocket, and came up with a flask. He opened the flask and drank from it. When he was done, he laughed softly and roared down the shaft again. “You’ll hear me soon enough! You better get running, girl, cause Daddy’s coming down there to find you!”

The doomsday prepper snatched up the shotgun and started down the stairs, increasing his pace until his footsteps sounded like someone pounding on a door. They got farther and farther away, and the moment I could no longer see him, I crept down the stairs and padded fast to the hatch.

I paused, listening, and heard him howl again and then open a door several stories belowground. The humming noise grew louder, but only for a second.

Part of me wanted to go after him. Part of me wanted to know if there was actually a woman named Maxine down there. Was this the woman who Rivers’s old girlfriend had heard crying through the anthill’s air vents?

Was Maxine down there?

I wanted to find out, but I’d pushed my luck already. I checked my watch. I’d been gone fifty minutes.

I left, shut the hatch, kept to the shadows, and made it to the tree line without incident. Ten minutes later, I exited the woods to see the silhouette of Sampson standing there on the dirt road.

“I was just coming for you,” he said.

“Sorry I’m late. Let’s get out of here.”

We were in the car and a good mile down the road before I told John what I’d seen and heard inside.

“You think he’s got someone down there?”

“Could be,” I said. “But no way to prove it for the moment.”

“So what do we do?”

I chewed on my lip for several moments before saying, “We follow Rivers everywhere he goes outside the compound. And when—”

My phone dinged in my pocket. I pulled it out, saw a Wickr text from Ali: Dad, Nana wants to know when you’ll be home for dinner.

The message vanished, and I typed back, On my way, Mr. Bond!