The Compound Read online

  This is the way the world ends

  This is the way the world ends

  This is the way the world ends

  Not with a bang but a whimper.

  —T. S. ELIOT

  PROLOGUE

  T. S. ELIOT WAS WRONG. MY WORLD ENDED WITH A BANG the minute we entered the Compound and that silver door closed behind us.

  The sound was brutal.

  Final.

  An echoing, resounding boom that slashed my nine-year-old heart in two. My fists beat on the door. I bawled. The screaming left me hoarse and my feet hurt.

  Through my tears, the bear and elk on my father’s shirt swam together. Beneath the chamois, Dad’s chest heaved. The previous forty minutes had left us out of breath. Finally my gaze focused and went beyond him, searching. I gulped down a painful sob.

  Had everyone made it?

  Farther down the corridor I saw my weeping mother, dressed in a burgundy robe, dark tendrils dangling from her once-careful braid. Mom clutched my six-year-old sister, Terese, a sobbing pigtailed lump in pink flowered flannel. From one small hand dangled her beloved Winnie the Pooh.

  Behind them stomped my eleven-year-old sister, Lexie, dark hair mussed, arms crossed over the front of her blue silk pajamas. Not being brother-of-the-year material, I almost didn’t care if she made it or not.

  But my grandmother wasn’t in sight.

  “Where’s Gram?” I shouted.

  Dad patted my head, hard and steady, like I was a dog. He spoke slowly, in the same tone he used to explain to the household help the exact amount of starch he required in his shirts. “Eli, listen to me. There wasn’t enough time. I waited as long as I could. It was imperative I get the rest of you to safety. We had to shut the door before it was too late.”

  The door. Always, the door.

  Another look. No sign of my twin brother. He was the person I needed the most. Where was he?

  My pounding heart suggested I already knew the answer. “Eddy?” His name caught in my throat, stuck tight by the panic rising up from my belly.

  Dad whirled around, his tone accusing. “I thought Eddy was with you.”

  My head swung from side to side. Between sobs, the words barely eked out. “He went with Gram.”

  Dad’s face clouded with indecision. Just for a moment. Had that moment lasted, it might have changed all of our futures. But Dad snapped back into control. “I still have one of you.” With just six words, my childhood ended.

  As did the rest of the world.

  I knew what happened that night. We had been prepared. Other kids got bedtime stories about fairies and dogs. We fell asleep with visions of weapons of mass destruction dancing in our heads. Every evening, dinner included updates Dad downloaded from the Internet, updates on the U.S. involvement in the Middle East, the status of nuclear weapons programs in places like Iran and North Korea, names of countries that had been added to the list of those with WMDs.

  Dad gripped my shoulders and pulled me away from the silver door, twisting me around to follow the rest of my family. What was left of it. I clung to my father’s hand. He rushed ahead of me, his hand dropping mine.

  I lifted my hand to my face and it reeked of fuel.

  The corridor ended. We paraded through an archway strung with twinkling white lights, then entered an enormous circular room. The place reminded me of a yurt we’d built in school, only about eighty times bigger. The curved walls were made of log beams; the same type that crisscrossed over our heads in an intricate pattern. The roundness of the room was odd yet comforting.

  Unlit logs sat in an elaborate stone fireplace, around which luxurious, overstuffed couches, love seats, and armchairs formed an audience. For a few seconds, despite the situation, my nine-year-old mind pondered what wonderful forts could be made with all those cushions.

  Mom sat on a green couch and cradled Terese, while Lexie stood beside them, glowering. Dad lit kindling between the logs in the fireplace. The familiar smell of wood smoke wafted toward us, seeming out of place in a setting so distinctly unfamiliar. My father put his hand on my mother’s shoulder. His knuckles were white. He chose that moment to tell my mother and sisters that Gram and Eddy hadn’t made it.

  The announcement made it real. Made it final. A verbal execution.

  Wails erupted from inside me. Mom and Lexie cried, too.

  I ran to my mother. She held me along with Terese. Lexie leaned against Dad, and his arms encircled her.

  We stayed that way for a long time, my face crushed to Mom’s bosom. She smelled of lilacs. As I sobbed, she stroked my hair. Like always, Mom’s touch was comforting and warm. Even that night, that heinous night, her touch helped. Our cries sounded over the crackling of the logs. After a long while, sobs faded to sniffs and shudders, waning from fresh grief into leftovers.

  Feeling the need to move, I stood up. I wiped my nose with my sleeve, and climbed onto a stool by a large bar with a stainless steel refrigerator behind it.

  Dad flicked a switch.

  A plasma television dropped down from the ceiling, blank monitor glowing. “I figured we’d be in here a lot.” The blue from the television tinted Dad’s face and blond hair in a garish way. He startled me when he threw his arms out to the side. “Cozy, yes? What do you think?”

  “It’s not what I expected.” Mom’s voice was shaky.

  Dad rubbed his jaw. “What did you expect?”

  I had a pretty good idea what Mom was thinking. In third grade, I gave an oral report on nuclear war. If you lived in a target area like we did, you had approximately forty minutes after nuclear weapons were launched. Forty minutes to do what? Say good-bye to loved ones, stuff yourself with doughnuts, take a hundred-mile-an-hour joy ride: whatever one did with only forty minutes left to live.

  If you were me, the son of Rex Yanakakis, billionaire? Those forty minutes were spent escaping to an underground shelter, built specifically for the Yanakakis family. Here, I would live out the next fifteen years in luxurious comfort while nearly everyone else perished. We hadn’t seen the shelter, only heard Dad talk about it. So I think Mom felt like I did, a little surprised the place actually existed.

  “I don’t know.” Mom’s head swayed slightly. The movement caused a tear to drip off the slope of her nose. “At least it’s quiet down here.”

  Dad observed her for a moment. Then he switched off the television. “Eli? Lexie? Want to see your rooms?”

  Our grave circumstances had not yet sunk in. I was a robot, dazed, simply sliding off the stool to follow my father and my older sister. It felt like a dream. Through a doorway on the opposite side of the room from where we’d entered, we proceeded down a long carpeted hallway similar to the ones in our house in Seattle. Only difference was this one smelled of vanilla and had the constant hum of a generator.

  Dad narrated as we walked. “All the walls are reinforced, as we discussed, to keep out radiation. But the concrete is not pleasant to look at, so all the rooms are finished in wallboard or wood. I didn’t want you to feel surrounded by concrete and steel.”

  Dad stopped in front of a purple door. Lexie pushed it open and squealed. Leave it to her to cheer up over material possessions. Like something out of an Arabian Nights book, silk tapestries and curtains of bright colors were draped everywhere. A monstrous canopy bed ran the length of one whole wall. There was an exotic, cloying aroma. Incense maybe?

  Lexie disappeared into the closet. When Dad talked about the Compound, he told us we’d have duplicates of everything we treasured. What an idiot I had been, to believe everything I cherished could be reproduced.

  We left Lexie to explore and continued down the corridor. Dad indicated my room on the right. I pushed open the red door. Fresh-smelling meadowy air blew softly into my face. A bed took up the entir
e near wall, but there was no canopy like Lexie’s. Instead, I looked up at the night sky.

  Dad’s hand squeezed my shoulder. “The constellations rotate. It’s timed to be accurate from sundown to sunup, and will alter with the seasons. You can even choose the southern hemisphere if you like. During the day the bulbs mimic the actual progression of the sun. Of course, you have artificial light available at any time, but I thought you might miss your sunsets.”

  My sunsets? Not just mine. I wanted to shout at him. They were Eddy’s sunsets, too.

  Every day since we were seven, Eddy and I sat on the front lawn of our estate and watched the sun set over Puget Sound. The evening ritual began with Els, an old lady from Belgium, who was one of our family’s cooks. Hardly taller than Eddy and me, she wore her silver hair in a bun and squeaked around in white orthopedic shoes. As a rule, she never smiled.

  One evening after dinner, she set out ice cream and bowls for sundaes, then left us to make our own. Sometimes we’d make a little mess, usually just drippings on the counter, smears of chocolate sauce. But that day I dropped a scoop of ice cream on the red-tiled counter. Instead of just picking it up, I poured fudge sauce over it. Eddy giggled and squirted whipped cream on top. I added a few cherries. We laughed. Then we filled our dishes.

  Before we were done, Els returned. She saw the chaos and must have known I had caused it. She shook her finger in my face, speaking in her strong accent: “Brat, you are always a brat.” She grabbed me by one ear. Her pinching grip was extra firm. From decades of kneading, I imagined. She had no trouble dragging me out the door.

  I fell to my knees on the soft lawn. My ear hurt and I rubbed it while scowling up at her. “I’m telling my dad!”

  Els raised her hands. “What will he say? He tells you always, ‘Go out, get fresh air.’ I give you fresh air.” She slammed the door.

  Eddy had followed us outside with an ice cream sundae in each hand, splotches of whipped cream adorning his face. He sat down next to me and handed me a bowl. Banished to the lawn, we ate our ice cream and perceived the sunset as an actual event for the first time ever. The next day, we found ourselves waiting for it to happen again.

  Sunsets, imitation or not, would no longer be the same.

  Still, knowing my dad expected it of me, I lamely thanked him for the extravagant special effects. The room was done in the primary colors that appeal to boys of nine. One wall held shelves that stretched into the stars, and a speedy scan revealed my favorite books and other possessions. Copies, of course.

  Dad asked me if I wanted to see more of the Compound.

  I didn’t. We would have to wait fifteen years, fifteen years before it would be safe to go outside. Which left more than enough time to see the rest of the Compound. Our new world. A new world I would soon hate.

  Dad rubbed my shoulder. Suddenly his touch suffocated me. My stomach lurched, and I thought I might be sick. I wriggled down, away from his grip.

  We went back to the family room. Terese slept on the couch. When Mom saw us, she shifted Terese off her lap and stood. Her eyes were vacant as she went behind the bar and made instant hot chocolate with marshmallows in the microwave.

  I don’t recall finishing my drink. I just remember feeling the emptiness in my gut. And the guilt. Nothing would ever be the same without Eddy, but I had to live with that. Why? Because it was my fault he wasn’t there. My fault Eddy was dead. That night, I blamed myself.

  Almost six years later, the feeling was just as strong. As was the feeling that all was not right in our new world.

  TERESE DRIBBLED PAST ME, SWITCHING HANDS AS I’D TAUGHT her. A few months shy of twelve, she’d gotten taller in the last year, but still came only halfway up my chest. With her dark hair in the same braids she always had, the shrimp looked closer to ten.

  Mom, Lexie, and Terese had white T-shirts and velour jogging suits in every color that particular clothing company produced. Even though Terese had plenty to choose from, she always wore purple.

  Little Miss Perfect annoyed me, the way she always seemed so hell-bent on doing the right thing. Fluent in French, she also played the oboe. Hers was custom-made of the best grenadilla, African black wood. Dad brought it home from Paris when Terese was five. What other kid that age had a $10,000 oboe? I suppose I couldn’t talk. Dad bought my $4,000 Getzen trumpet when I was six.

  But down here my choices of people to hang out with were limited. Time wasn’t.

  Almost six years in the Compound. Six years.

  Well over two thousand days, most of them pretty much the same. But routine tends to equal comfort, which does provide some semblance of security. My alarm went off at seven. I rose to do tai chi for a half hour. Gram had taught Eddy and me the summers we stayed with her in Hawaii. The exercise ritual made me feel closer to both of them.

  Then I showered. The bathroom was dark blue marble, with a huge whirlpool tub as well as a step-in shower that could hold an entire football team. A mirror ran the length of the room and I had two sinks all to myself. I switched every other day, with no particular reason why. Guess I relished having an option. Not a lot of those underground.

  Most days, I weighed myself and checked out my body in the mirror. I was six feet and still growing, one hundred eighty pounds, and my muscles were well defined. Was I vain? I don’t think so. I worked hard at getting my physique to that level. The outside was a lot easier to perfect than the inside.

  For obvious reasons, thoughts of Eddy invaded me most when I looked in the mirror. If he were alive, I wondered, would he have had the same build? Same hair? Looking to control some aspect of my life, I’d refused to cut my hair after I turned twelve. It fell past my shoulders. Sometimes I left it down, so I had to peer out from behind a curtain. I couldn’t see anyone. Made me believe they couldn’t see me either.

  I pulled my hair back into a ponytail secured with bands I’d taken from Lexie. It was nice, having the same face as Eddy. I never had to struggle to picture him; I simply looked in the mirror. Some days that face was a comfort. But other days, I couldn’t bear to see his face—or mine.

  Every day, I dressed in jeans and a T-shirt emblazoned with Dad’s company’s logo, YK, the biggest computer manufacturer and software developer in the world. Early on in the Compound, Dad explained there was clothing in every size we might possibly need.

  He just neglected to mention that while sizes were limitless, style selection was not. In addition to jeans and YK T-shirts, my wardrobe consisted of gray sweatpants. Certainly didn’t take me long to pick something out in the morning.

  In our old world, my favorite shirt was an orange-and-white-striped rugby. Eddy had one, too, but he never wore his. I loved orange so much that I practically wore out that shirt. When we arrived down here, there was one in my closet, but I outgrew it. After I told Mom it was too small, it just didn’t come back from the laundry. I missed the color. If I could have had one new thing to wear, it would’ve been a big orange hooded sweatshirt.

  My routine also included running six miles on the treadmill in the gym each afternoon. The gym was big, the type you’d see in a school or YMCA, with an extra fifty feet or so at the end for fitness machines. A rower, an elliptical machine, a treadmill, and a recumbent bike made up the cardio part, with a boatload of free weights for the strength portion. No one lifted weights except me anymore.

  In the old world, and for a time in the new, Dad was obsessive about exercise. He was obsessive about a lot of things, but exercise was near the top. He told me that a powerful man should have a powerful body as well. He’s the one who got me into lifting and running every day. So I was surprised when he just stopped. It wasn’t a gradual thing, where he’d just skip a day and then start up again. One day he just stopped and I never saw him set foot in the gym again. I didn’t ask why. I never asked why. We weren’t allowed to question our father in the old world, and the same rule applied in the Compound. Anyway, nothing he could say would change our reality.

  Besides, I liked ha
ving the place to myself. Most of the time. Mom used the cardio equipment when she felt up to it. And once in a while I’d break routine and shoot baskets with Terese.

  I lunged, stealing the ball from her a bit too rough. I was careful not to let my hands touch her. Since that first night in the Compound I didn’t ever touch anyone with my bare hands. “You have to protect it, Reese.”

  Terese stopped to look at me, her green eyes bright. “I have been thinking about Father.”

  As much as I heard my sister speak every day, I could never get used to that English accent. Or the way she called our parents Mother and Father. Like all of us, she had her own routines, one of which was to watch Mary Poppins at least once a day. She must have seen it more than a thousand times. I wished that DVD would finally wear out.

  She sucked on one of her braids. “Do you hate him?”

  I shot and missed.

  Her eyebrows went up. “I just wondered.”

  The ball bounced off the wall and rolled back toward me. I retrieved it and dribbled. I ignored her, figuring she’d keep talking anyway. It was nothing new, for her to talk about Dad behind his back, then be all adoring daughter to his face.

  She kept on talking. “I do, you see. I think I might hate him.” She caught my pass and did a layup.

  I shook my head, rebounded, shot again, then caught the ball when it dropped through the net.

  Granted, I wasn’t Dad’s biggest fan. He ran our lives in the Compound the way he had on the outside. The only one who had ever questioned Dad’s decisions was Gram. She was the one person I’d seen stand up to him. The last time Eddy and I went to Hawaii with her, we almost didn’t get to go. And I wanted to go so badly. She lived in a small rural community, all locals descended from long lines of locals, where no one cared who we were. For those short weeks we spent with her every summer, we were just kids from the mainland.

  At first, Dad refused. He said we should be at home going to science and math camps. But Gram marched into his office, dressed in a hibiscus-covered muumuu. She emerged a few minutes later, wide smile on her face. Dad had been close behind, a frown on his.