Guido slid the lock through its catch after he closed the bunker’s overhead door. The sound of metal scratching against metal echoed through the small entryway, like fingernails over a chalkboard. He winced, waiting for the reverberations to cease. When they did, he moved to the second door and slid it open.
She was waiting for him. She sat on the couch, still wearing the Bratz pajamas she’d had on when she first arrived. Her brown hair was clumped and ratty, but to him, in the dim yellow light, it looked silky and beautiful. Her eyes lifted. She recoiled for a split second and then smiled. Her teeth were crooked, in bad need of braces she would never get.
He slid the gas mask from his head and took a deep breath. His lungs rattled, but that was okay. He’d lived with worse than that before.
The room was small, barely ten feet by ten, entombed by concrete walls four feet deep. This was Guido’s pride and joy – a bomb shelter he’d constructed over the last twenty years, a bomb shelter folks assured him he’d never need. He chuckled. So much for them.
He’d stocked the cubby beneath the shelter with enough canned goods and water to last two years, though the girl had thrown off his initial estimations. Grabbing a flashlight, he lifted the hatch and looked inside. The gas generator that powered the lights and the air filter chugged along below the earth, its exhaust piped out to the surrounding woods. He smiled upon hearing its guttural purr. Snatching a couple cans of peaches from a shelf, he shut the hatchway and turned.
“Do you want some food, Alyssa?” he asked.
The little girl nodded.
“Yes please, Mr. Malfi,” she replied.
They sat down to eat.
“Tell me one of your stories,” said Alyssa. She picked up a syrupy peach with her bare hand and plunked it in her mouth.
Guido stroked his white beard. “Hm. Let’s see. I told you about the Kennedy assassination, right?”
She nodded.
“How about G.W. and his plan to dominate the world economy by crashing planes into a couple buildings?”
Again, she nodded.
“How about the moon? Have I talked about that?”
“No,” she said with a shake of the head. “Tell me that one.”
“Okay. Well, it happened a long time ago, when I was a young’n in college. We and the Ruskies were always at each other’s throats, trying to beat each other at everything, as if that would help distract us from knowing one side or the other would soon lose patience and launch the first nuke. One of the meanest competitions was this ‘race to space’ thing. Whoever landed on the moon would get some sort of bragging rights, take first place in this pissing contest we had going. So one day, we did it. We landed on the moon. The whole world stood up and cheered for us, as if we’d accomplished something. But here’s the thing, Alyssa. We never did reach the moon. It was all a ruse. You know what a film studio is?”
She listened intently as he spoke, her chin resting on her fists. She stared at him with those wide eyes of hers, and beneath his stories he felt his heart melting. This little girl was everything to him, and had been since the day she came running into his yard screaming while sirens blared in the background. The announcement had just come over the airways, and everyone was in a panic. Vandals tore through every corner of Mercy Hills, Connecticut, his hometown. The little girl had looked so scared, so on edge, as she arrived at the doorstep of his farmhouse while he was outside sealing the shelter from the rain of ash soon to come. At first, he thought to ignore her, to turn her away like he had the Letts family when they came calling. He hesitated, though, and when he looked in those large, innocent eyes, he remembered the dreams of his youth, the love of his family. The family she’d most certainly lost in the chaos of a crumbling society.
So he’d brought her in. He’d saved her, and that memory filled him with pride. Daughter, he thought. She is my daughter now. Or granddaughter, at least.
When he finished his story, he smiled. They said their goodnights, climbed into their cots on either side of the room, turned off the lights, and fell asleep.
A sound awoke him. It was like static, or baseball cards fastened to the spokes of a bicycle. He sat up, his tired muscles aching, and searched for the pull chord in the dark. He found it dangling above him and yanked. The overhead light clicked on. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust.
Alyssa was already awake. She sat on her cot, knees pulled to her chest. Her eyes, always wide, were even more so now. The poor girl looked petrified. The strange crackling sounded again.
“What is that?” he asked.
Alyssa pulled her knees closer and buried her head between them.
Guido swung his legs over the side of the cot. The concrete floor was cold beneath his bare feet. The thought came to mind that there might be people outside, desperate people who would do anything, kill anybody, for a chance at survival. He grabbed his baseball bat from above his reading desk and went to the reinforced door. Pressing his ear to it, he listened. There was nothing at first, and then that fizz came again. Only it wasn’t coming from beyond the door, he realized. It came from inside the shelter.
He glanced at his desk, walked to it, and sat down. Positioned on the side was his ancient radio, still plugged in. His fingers touched the volume and turned it up. At first there was nothing, and then it crackled. It sounded like static, but beneath, he swore he could hear a voice. He twisted the tuning knob – Guido Melfi believed in the solid construction of the old, and this radio hadn’t failed him since his teen years – and slowly, the speaker on the other end broke into startling clarity.
“This is a message for all survivors,” the voice said. It was male, polite, and had a thick accent. “My name is Colonel Martin Doucette. Citizens of the United States, we have arrived. We apologize for the delay, but we’re here now, and we’re here to help. As of this moment, our ships are docked and waiting for your arrival. You will be granted amnesty in France, if you choose to exit your homelands. We will remain docked for a period of one month, and hand out supplies to those that remain behind. The list of safe ports is as follows: Boston Harbor, Groton Harbor, New York Harbor…”
Guido clicked off the radio. One hundred and twelve days of silence after the eruption, and it was the French, the goddamn French, who came to their aid. He couldn’t help but smile.
They’ve always gotten a bad rap, he thought. They may be a bit testy, but hey, they’re French, so who could blame them? Americans seemed to have forgotten that if it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t have a country to call home in the first place…
He wheeled around, snapped the radio off, and rushed to the aluminum chest that passed for a closet. Throwing it open, he tore through its contents. Clothes flew this way and that.