There was a slight wind outside, and she glanced at the sky again. It still looked clear, but even with Dennis’s assurances, she didn’t trust the clouds to stay away. She’d had too many close calls with the weather, and it was on a day like this that the snow had swept through the valley and the mountains and left her both a widow and a woman without a child. She moved farther into the cave, around the lip of the entrance and out of the touch of the wind. She bent into a crouch and leaned against the wall. She did not know how long the men would want to spend in the cave, but she settled herself in for a wait.
From her perspective, they seemed to be both hurrying and doing nothing. They pulled small machines from their backpacks, some she recognized, and others she hadn’t seen before, and proceeded to gather samples from the floor of the cave. One of them took something that looked like a wand and ran it against the wall. The wand had a series of lights and let out a regular pattern of beeps that seemed to speed up as the lights changed from dull yellow to a piercing red. When the beeps settled into a steady tone, the man lowered the wand and called Dennis over. All of them stopped what they were doing, and from her spot crouched against the wall, she watched. After a few minutes, one of the men went and sorted through the pile of tools and shovels, taking the long-handled pickax. He started banging away at the rock.
She lost interest, however, because she’d seen something illuminated by the lights moving around the cave. She walked over to the packs on the floor and took one of the lanterns. She held it up, searching for what she’d seen. The light flared against the wall, moving the shadows around her. It took her a moment to find it. There. Up on the opposite wall. Far enough back that she’d never been able to see it before when she spent nights huddled in the near darkness with her sheep. It was as high as she could reach. Coal-black smeared on the wall. It was ash, she thought, but then, no. She lifted the lantern up and knew it was something else. Something older. She’d seen pictures painted in the caves before, but this one was different. It was simple. The sight of it made her shiver. A spider.
Behind her, the sound of the pickax striking the cave wall was constant, the man breathing hard as he swung.
The woman let the light of the lantern play over the wall, but there were no more paintings, no more pictures. Just the single spider. It made her uneasy. She was not afraid of spiders. There was no reason to be afraid of spiders. But still.
There was a small cheer and some applause. She looked over her shoulder. The man with the pickax was smiling. He’d broken through the wall. There was dark space behind it. Another cave. A tunnel. She couldn’t see. A different man took the ax and started swinging, and the hole widened rapidly. It would be only a few minutes before it was large enough to admit a person, she thought.
Outside the entrance of the cave she saw something float by. A flake of snow? She looked out anxiously. How long had they been in there?
The sky, which had been blisteringly clear, was littered with clouds. The temperature had dropped. She could feel the damp cold of a coming storm. Behind her, the sound of the ax against the rock had stopped, but there was something else. A rhythmic thumping. The men were talking, and she turned to find Dennis. To tell him they needed to leave. A storm was coming.
And then she was no longer sure if she was looking at the sky or at the roof of the cave. But it was dark. And she was screaming.
Desperation, California
Seven minutes.
Seven minutes from seeing the news about the nuke until he’d secured the entrance to the shelter. Gordo was sweating and had to piss, but he’d called Amy from his truck, and she and Claymore were waiting for him underground by the time he came down the stairs at full tilt. Amy looked grim but determined, and Claymore, who had spent a lot of time down in the shelter with Gordo—Gordo had gotten into the habit of watching baseball out here instead of in the house where it drove Amy to distraction, and usually brought the dog with him—seemed to notice nothing out of the ordinary. Claymore did what he always did when he saw Gordo, which was wag his tail and then roll over onto his back and wait for some tummy rubbing.
Gordo checked the shelter doors one more time—this was the real deal, and one mistake would be the last—and then pulled his T-shirt up to wipe the sweat off his face. He bent over and scratched the chocolate Lab’s belly and then looked at his wife. “Say it,” he said. “I want to hear you say it.”
Amy’s mouth puckered in a little smile. He knew one of the things she loved about him was his ability to lighten things up. Even in a moment like this, less than twenty minutes before nuclear weapons were going to start raining from the sky, Gordo could make things feel better for Amy.
“You were right,” Amy said.
Gordo straightened up and put one hand to his ear. “What was that? It sounded like . . . no. I didn’t quite catch that.”
He could see Amy trying to keep her face still, but it didn’t work, and her small smile got bigger. She shook her head. “I said, you were right.”