The Resurrected Compendium Read online

  Maybe revived by the fresh air, Dennis shoved her forward. Her bare foot hit the first step. She was expecting splintery, dirty wood, but the surface was smooth, like linoleum. Another couple steps up, Dennis right behind her, and the door creaked shut behind them. A whoosh and a rumble pressed her eardrums — she hadn’t noticed how loud the sound of the fire had been until they were in this sealed silence.

  Dennis sagged for a moment against the wall, breathing hard, but grinning faintly. She could see his face, some faint luminescence painting it in shadows, the whites of his teeth glowing. In that minute, just that minute, Kelsey decided she could love him.

  “Sealed room. Separate air filtration system.” He moved a few feet toward a bank of boxes set under the eaves and lifted a lid. “Emergency supplies.”

  Kelsey moved closer to see. Water, foil blankets, food in packets. She looked up at him. “Your mom…”

  “She was crazy.” Dennis’s grin faded, and he passed a hand over his eyes for a second or two before looking at her again. “Guess she was right though, huh?”

  Kelsey nodded and grabbed a bottle of water. She couldn’t decide if it would be better to drink it or wash her face with it, scrub at her stinging eyes. She gulped some, then splashed her skin. The water wasn’t cold, but she let out a little gasp. Dripping, she gestured toward the door.

  “The house is still on fire.”

  Dennis drained his own bottle, his throat working. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and tossed the empty bottle to the floor. “Yeah. That.”

  The boards beneath Kelsey’s feet felt warmer than a few minutes ago, or maybe that was her imagination. She shifted, pointing her toes, one foot and the other. “What do we do?”

  “She built this room in case of invasion,” Dennis said. “Chemical agents. She was convinced that if someone got in the house they’d be using gas bombs or smoke.”

  “She got part of it right. She never considered fire?”

  “She thought about fire.” Dennis went to a corner of the attic, ducking to avoid hitting his head on the slanted ceiling. Set into the floor was a metal ring held in place with a thick lock. He nudged it with his toe. “Escape plan. But it’s going to be tough.”

  “Better than burning alive.” Kelsey moved closer. “Can you open it?”

  “Of course. Unless she changed the combination,” Dennis told her. He bent, using his uninjured hand to tug at the lock. “If there was one dumb thing my mom did, it was make all the combinations the same, or close to it. But she said keys could get lost. I tried to tell her that if someone figured out one password they’d know them all, but Mom always said if someone got past everything else, they deserved to figure out her codes.”

  “She sounds like a smart lady.”

  “Crazy,” Dennis repeated.

  Kelsey touched his shoulder, squeezing gently. “If she wasn’t so crazy, where would we be now?”

  “Not about to be barbecued like a couple of hot dogs.” Dennis grinned.

  Kelsey laughed. “Yes. Maybe. Or else we’d be dead already, some freak’s lunch. Get that hatch open, Dennis. I’m starting to sweat.”

  She wasn’t really. The air filtration was still working, bringing them slightly stale but not smoky air. Anxiety pricked at her though, thinking of how the flames had rushed at the stairs. Hungry. Fire destroyed everything.

  “It’s going to hurt,” Dennis said, gesturing at her foot.

  “Worse than being burned?” She paused, thinking. “Have you ever been burned?”

  “Yes.”

  She thought of the scars she’d paid to have removed, the small circles of flesh that had been so casually ruined by her grandmother’s cigarettes. Of fingertips pressed to electric burners. Even of sipping at hot chocolate before it cooled. This would be worse than any of that.

  “Not as bad as being burned,” Dennis added. “I just wanted to warn you.”

  Impulsively, Kelsey kissed him. Quickly, hitting the corner of his mouth and not full-on, but he didn’t pull away. “What are we doing?”

  With his bad hand, Dennis couldn’t quite get a good enough grip to undo the lock, so Kelsey did it. Together they pulled the metal ring to lift the heavy wooden hatch. Below it, darkness and a glint of metal.

  “A fire-pole?” She asked.

  “Yes. Metal shaft, smooth on the inside, just big enough for a normal sized person. You’ll have plenty of room.” He eyed her.

  Kelsey’s brows rose. “And at the bottom?”

  “Concrete.”

  “Ouch.”

  “That’s why you’ll have to hold on. Grip the pole hard.” He looked at her legs, the bare skin, then at her face. “With your thighs. Can you…can you do that?”

  “Of course. I can crack a walnut with these babies.” He might be blushing, she couldn’t be sure, but now wasn’t the time to be coy. She peered over the edge into the darkness. “A door?”

  “There’s a sliding door at the bottom that opens into a walled-off section of the basement. There’s a tunnel from there, leads out to behind the garden shed.”

  She smiled, though by now the floor was definitely getting hotter, and she was convinced she could smell the first bite of smoke. “Clever.”

  “The door at the bottom is locked. Triple coded. Electronic keypad.” He paused. “No room to maneuver. And if the electricity’s gone out without the automatic generator backup, the door won’t work. We’ll be trapped.”

  Kelsey swallowed hard. “Better hope the generator’s still working, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  She rubbed her hands together briskly, testing the ache in her sprained wrist. It would have to be okay. “So, what are we waiting for?”

  Dennis looked uncomfortable. “I think you’ll need to go first…my hand. I’m not sure I can lower myself down. I might just fall. And I won’t be able to do the locks at the bottom, she set it so both have to be done at the same time. Two hands.”

  “I can handle it,” Kelsey assured him.

  “I know you can.”

  Still, he hesitated. There wasn’t time for this. Kelsey moved closer, both her hands on his shoulders, to look into his eyes. “What?”

  Dennis licked his lips, gaze steady on hers. “It’s the only combination I’m not positive I know.”

  “Okay.”

  He shook his head slightly. “If you get it wrong…”

  Kelsey frowned, her stomach sinking. “Let me guess. Something shoots out of the walls and kills me.”

  “She was crazy,” Dennis told her almost apologetically. “But very, very thorough.”

  54

  Maddy crept along the corridor on silent feet, not because she was worried about being caught but because it felt good to be sneaky. Everyone else was sleeping, but Maddy wasn’t tired. She was never tired anymore. Toe-to-heel, sliding her sock feet on the smooth floor, she pretended she was a spy. Back to the wall, around the corner. Quick, quick. Look to the left, look to the right. She pointed her gun first one way, then the other, giving the “go” signal to an invisible army behind her.

  Dad always said guns were a necessary evil, that too many stupid people didn’t see them as weapons but as toys. A gun’s only purpose was to kill, Dad said. Sometimes, that was what you had to do, but you should always know that’s what you were doing and why.

  Maddy had pulled this gun from a box under Dad’s bed. All the guns were supposed to be locked up and used only by the people who were on guard duty upstairs, outside, or in the big sections of the mine that the community hadn’t taken over. People on guard duty rode in special golf carts all around the underground caverns. Maddy thought that would be super fun, especially if you got to race them, but Dad said she was too young to drive a golf cart, much less go out there on guard duty where there could be any kind of crazy or sick people.

  Maddy wondered what Dad would say about her carrying a gun.

  She hadn’t known how to load it, but the whispering voices told her. Didn’t tell her