“I do know best.” Before he said it, Dad had hesitated.
Barely, but I saw it. Which gave me the strength to say what I needed to. “I don’t think only you knowing the code for the door is the best thing, Dad.”
“And who else should know? You?” He laughed.
My hands clenched.
“Eli, you are young and impulsive. One bad day and you’d be wanting out.”
If he only knew. I went for it. “Why do you get to be the one to make all the decisions?”
Dad’s expression changed. Became hard. “Why? Because I built this place, it’s mine. I should make all the decisions.”
I couldn’t stop. “And the rest of us? You own us, too?”
Dad shook his head. He set a hand on his stomach, wincing. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Bull!” This wasn’t how I planned it. Too late. My emotions were running the show. “I got on the Internet, I talked to Eddy. You’ve lied to us from the beginning—there was no nuclear attack—it was all a lie. We could have left here any time. Any frickin’ time!” My tone was a screech by the time I got done.
Mom didn’t even tell me to watch my language as her eyes squeezed shut and she gripped her knitting needles so hard that her knuckles turned white.
Lexie stood up. Her forehead wrinkled as she processed what I’d said. She sank into the couch next to Mom, apparently forgetting her animosity of moments before.
I suddenly wished I had told Lexie about Eddy and the Internet before. She deserved to know. But I wasn’t done. “When I think of everything you made us believe. The things you would have made us do.” I looked at Lexie before turning back to Dad. “And none of them were necessary. Not even one. This place wasn’t our sanctuary. This was your world. Your twisted world.”
Dad looked from Mom to Lexie, then back to me. His face held no expression. “I wanted to save my family from the largest menace of the modern age. I’m twisted for wanting to save my family?”
“But there was no nuclear attack to save us from!”
His voice was calm. “You don’t know that. You have no way of knowing what the truth is and what isn’t.”
How could he say that?
“I do! I talked to Eddy and Gram and they told me everything. …” I trailed off, sounding like a little kid trying to talk his way out of getting grounded for something inane like shaving the family cat.
Dad scratched his head. “I’m not sure what kind of person you’ve become, if you fault me that much for ensuring the survival of my wife and children.”
“I know what happened!” My voice quavered, which only served to make me more determined. I was not going to back down. “You did this to us, you set it all up. There were no nukes. I know it. I can’t prove it, but I know it’s the truth. And now you have to give me the code, so we can get out.”
My hair had fallen in front of my eyes and I slowly pushed it back. I forced myself to calm down, sound rational for my last plea. “Just let us go, Dad. After all this time, you owe us that.”
His eyebrows lowered and his voice was thunder. “I am your father. I owe you nothing.”
“Oh my God.” Mom stood up, her face red, her hands trembling. “Is it true?”
Dad didn’t look at her.
Mom dropped back down on the couch beside Lexie, who was crying. “Is it, Rex? Was this all a joke to you?” He met her eyes. “No, Clea. Not a joke. It was never that.”
“What about me?” Mom shook her head in disbelief. “You told me my son and my mother were dead and I believed you. My God, all these years I trusted you.”
Their eyes locked. She was the first to look away. Dad gazed at her a moment more, then crossed his arms, his shoulders slumped. “No one is leaving. You can’t. Okay, so Eli thinks he had a chat with someone. That doesn’t change a thing. The door isn’t opening until the time is up. We’ve got nine years left. It’s my plan and I’m not changing it.”
Mom put her hands over her face and spoke through them. “Why would you leave Eddy out?”
“I didn’t plan to.” Dad’s voice was softer than before. He stepped backward until he bumped into a bar stool and climbed onto it, gripping the edge of the bar for balance. “I just wanted to leave your mother out. So I left the kitten for Terese to find, I knew she’d bring it along. And I knew your mother would run back to the cabin for Eddy’s medicine. That was key, I think.” He shrugged. “To leave part of the family out there to mourn us. It made it all the more believable and tragic. However, I didn’t plan on Eddy going with her.” He held a hand out toward my mom. “Please believe me, Clea. That hurt me as much as it did you. But it was too late by then.”
Mom dropped her hands and walked over to him. “But I didn’t know!” Her face was so red and her eyes were nearly slits. I had never seen her that angry. “You told me my son and my mother were dead and I believed you. All these years I believed you.” Tears spilled onto her cheeks. She stepped forward and slapped him. Hard.
Dad put a hand up to his cheek. His voice was almost pleading. “Believe me, that broke my heart. Seeing your pain. But the deception was necessary for my plan.”
I wanted to kill him. “Some plan. You screwed up, Dad. The feed, the bulbs.”
His voice was a whisper. “Those weren’t entirely an accident.”
Mom stepped back and grabbed Lexie’s hand.
I couldn’t speak.
“I wanted to create the need for an alternate food source. I’d mentioned it to my … my planners, but I didn’t know for sure how they would make it happen. At the time the livestock died, I was so frustrated. Nothing had been going as I’d planned and I wondered if I should give up. But then I realized it was the perfect opportunity.” His cheek was an angry red. “Those issues created the perfect need for an alternate food source. What I came to call the Donner Effect.”
Lexie was incredulous. “Like those pioneer people who all ate each other? You would have let us die?”
Dad’s expression softened. “No, of course not. Don’t you think the world thought the people on the Oregon Trail were crazy? To leave solid, contented lives for some stupid quest? They weren’t crazy, they were brave. Brave and determined. Our life we were living, our oh-so-easy life, didn’t give any of you a chance to be brave or determined.”
He stopped to scratch his neck. “No, you would have grown up not knowing what it’s like to have to work, to strive. I wanted to see if we could do it, if our family would really have what it takes to survive.” He paused for a moment. “I have enough money to do anything, go anywhere. To take my children anywhere, buy them anything they want. How long would that have kept us satisfied? Before I even married your mother, I had already discovered that about money. Eventually you run out of things to buy. No, that’s not quite it.” He seemed to search for the right words. “Eventually you run out of things to buy that truly make you happy.”
Lexie broke in, speaking between sobs. “You had all of us. Didn’t we make you happy?”
Dad pulled a roll of antacid tablets out of his pocket. They were crumbly, in small pieces, so he sprinkled the remnants into his hand. He raised his hand to his mouth, then chewed before continuing. “Yes, Lexie. Of course. You all mean more to me than anything. I wanted to show you the world. But what would be left once you had seen everything, done everything?”
He leaned an elbow on the bar. “I didn’t want you to feel like I did, that the world had a limit on new experiences. I didn’t want you to feel like all the pioneering is over. The world out there doesn’t provide challenges like this. No one has ever done this before. I wanted us to be pioneers. I wanted to prove that we can do it. We will be the only people to theoretically survive a nuclear winter.”
“That’s it?” I shrugged when I would rather have screamed. “Couldn’t we have just hopped a flight to the moon?”
“Any idiot with a million dollars will be able to do that soon.” Dad chuckled a little. “Oh, come on, there’s always a bottom line
. Even as we speak I’m working on a more conventional, readily available prototype of the Compound. Because once we emerge and share our story, everyone will want one of these for themselves.” He spread his arms out wide for emphasis, then dropped them to his side. “For their families. So they can survive. And they will thank us for proving it can be done as they follow in our footsteps. Just like the people who followed those first pioneers into the West.”
I groaned. “And what, the Supplements were just meant to be collateral damage?”
Dad shook his head. “I never would have touched them, not in that way. They’re our children”—he nodded at Mom—“as much as any of you are.”
Lexie stood up. “How can you say that?” She flung one arm in the direction of the hallway. “They’ve been stuck in that yellow room since they were born.”
“And what’s so bad about the yellow room? What did you have as a child that they don’t?”
“Everything!” Lexie cried. “A real school. Friends.”
“Friends?” Dad rolled his eyes. “None of you kids ever had a friend that wasn’t there for your money or your last name.”
Mom wiped her eyes as she spoke up. “There’s something to be said for fresh air and sunshine.”
Dad nodded. “Yes. But they’ve also never seen violence on TV or been snowed over by advertisements. They don’t sit in front of the television and beg for everything they see. They aren’t brats like—”
Oh God. Like me. They weren’t brats like me.
Lexie gasped. “Like us? Is that what you were going to say?”
Dad turned to me. “Do you know when this Compound turned for me?”
I didn’t understand.
“I began building this place solely for survival. When you boys were born. I truly hoped we would never have to enter it as a family. In the beginning, that’s all it was. A safety net. Do you want to know when it turned into something else?”
I wasn’t sure if I did or not. “Yes.”
“You were seven. We went to the Rockies after Christmas.”
My breath caught in my throat, remembering. Our house in Colorado was part of the Rockies Club, a spectacular gated community with its own private ski hill. Our house was the biggest and most elaborate, the only one with a heated mile-long driveway, so that it would always stay clear for Dad to get to the helicopter pad in case he needed to leave for business.
“Remember, Eli?”
I nodded.
“I got a call from D.C. during a heavy snowfall. I planned to fly out the next morning after the snow stopped.”
I didn’t want to remember.
I went outside after dark to the propane tank, the forty-thousand-gallon tank that heated the driveway. So Dad could go wherever he needed to. So he could leave us again, screw up another family vacation for work. Screw up my plans for the next day. I wanted him to stay, wanted him to watch me on my new snowboard, wanted him to make hot chocolate afterward. So I turned off the valve on the tank. It was easy, the caretaker had shown me one day so I would quit bothering him. And in the morning—
“I couldn’t get out of the driveway. Remember, Eli? And you confessed. You cried, said you only wanted me to stay. You wanted me to be with you all the time, every day.”
I covered my eyes with one hand.
“I realized I was screwing up, leaving you all so much for work. And I didn’t want to anymore. I wanted to be with you all the time. Like you wanted me to be with you, son.”
And once again, I had gotten what I wanted.
I dropped my hand and looked at my father. No way was I taking the blame. “That doesn’t explain the rest of it. The food … the babies … God, the cloning?” I looked at Lexie.
Lexie looked back at me, her face shiny with tears.
He sighed. “That was merely a matter of seeing how far you would all go to survive.”
Mom let out a cry. She launched herself toward Dad, pummeling him with her fists.
He shoved her away, not unkindly.
Still, I lost it.
With every ounce of my strength and rage, I punched him in the face.
I’d never hit anyone before. The feel of his bones and flesh connecting with my hand sickened me. And it hurt. But touching him didn’t bother me. Or stop me from hitting him again. With my extra five inches of height and a good thirty pounds on him, it was no contest.
Lexie jumped onto my back, trying to stop me as blood spurted from his nose. Her arms were tight around my neck, her breathing heavy and warm in my ear, her body a dead weight on my back.
I paused at the sensation, wanting to freak out. To run away. But it wasn’t enough to stop me.
Dad lost his balance and fell off the stool. It looked like he was in slow motion. His head bounced on the floor. He slammed to a stop into the oak bar, and then was still.
With Lexie on my back, I straddled him. His neck was hot under my hands as I watched him through my veil of hair and gripped tighter, wanting to choke the life from him.
Lexie’s arms grew tighter around my neck until I couldn’t breathe. She pulled me back, away from him as she screamed. “Stop it! Stop it!”
Sweat dripped down my back.
My heart raced.
I’d been touched and I had touched and I was still alive. Only thing was, I didn’t know if Dad still was.
MY KNUCKLES WERE COVERED IN BLOOD. I DIDN’T KNOW IF IT was mine or his.
I backed away and Lexie finally got off. I felt so light without her.
Mom knelt by Dad. “Rex?”
He groaned. His eyes stayed closed. He didn’t utter any other sounds.
“Mom?” Lexie’s voice was shaky. She turned to me, her face red and blotched. “What did you do? Now we’ll never get out!”
Had I just messed up everything? I let my hair stay where it was, covering my face.
Mom’s voice was strong. “Eli, go get a gurney. We need to get him to the infirmary.”
My legs wouldn’t move.
Mom spoke again, firm but quiet. “Eli, go.”
I stumbled from the room, my breaths shallow and rapid. I staggered from one side of the hallway to the other, my hair obscuring my view, and I held a hand to my chest as I ran. My heart felt like it was going to explode. When I reached the infirmary, I bent over for a moment and caught my breath. As fast as I could, I pushed a gurney back to them. I’d picked one with squeaky wheels, and they were the only sound besides our breathing as we rolled Dad to the infirmary and got him into a bed.
Mom’s face was red and tear stained, and she struggled to catch her breath as she sat beside Dad and started to clean the blood off his face. She set a hand on his motionless arm. “He’s freezing.”
I spoke. “It’s my fault.”
She saw the look on my face. “It wasn’t your fault. You hit him, but you didn’t do this.” She shook her head as she assessed his condition. “I think something is really wrong with him.”
“No, not that.” I stood beside her. “It was my fault Eddy didn’t come with us.” The secret I had harbored all those years needed to be released. I told Lexie and Mom the truth about that night.
Our ninth birthday. We were excited to finally be almost in double digits. The annual big party was held the day before, so we could head to the cabin on the actual day. Dad’s acreage in eastern Washington was huge, with a ten-room log house we called the cabin. We had an RV, too, which we used to drive farther into the wilderness to go camping. Not that an RV was roughing it, but that’s what we called camping, anyway.
Gram came with us, sort of. She followed the RV with the Range Rover. She said she always liked to be prepared for emergencies. Although to her, an emergency might constitute running out of marshmallows for the s’mores we made over the campfire. A trip in the RV wasn’t a trip without Gram driving back to the cabin at least once.
As we drove along, Dad told us he had a big surprise for us. And he did. He’d just bought a new two-seater airplane. It went along with th
e new landing strip in the middle of the property, which is where we went with the RV. It was already dusk when we reached the site, so Dad promised we’d go flying first thing in the morning. We’d flip a coin to see which birthday boy would go first. Of course, I wanted it to be me.
We were getting ready for bed when Eddy started wheezing. Dad discovered a kitten in the RV. Terese admitted to finding it at the cabin, then smuggling it onto the RV. She started to cry and apologized to Eddy. She said she just wanted to make sure the kitten had a home.
The RV medicine cabinet always had some antihistamine for Eddy, but Mom came back empty-handed. “We’d better go get some at the cabin.”
Gram volunteered.
Eddy said he felt better. Gram insisted. “Just let me tuck Terese in. I’ll take the kitten back to the cabin and get it set up in the garage.”
Eddy and I crawled into bed. The airplane ride was still on my mind. “Hey, Eddy. I heard Dad and Gram talking. They said they have another surprise back at the cabin for us. What do you think it is?”
Eddy’s eyes widened. He loved surprises.
“Guess we’ll have to wait for tomorrow.” I rolled over and shut my eyes. I counted on the fact that Eddy also loved a mission.
“Eli? I’ve got an idea.”
“What?” I tried to stop them, but the corners of my mouth wanted to go up.
“I could hop in the back of the Range Rover and go with Gram. I could find out what it is.”
I sat up. “That’s a great idea. But you have to go now, while she’s with Terese.”
Eddy opened the window and dropped down to the ground. I lay back, grinning. I knew once Eddy was in the Range Rover with the kitten, he would start wheezing. And Gram would keep driving to the cabin; insist on staying there overnight. I would be the only birthday boy around in the morning when it was time to ride in Dad’s new plane.
The rest I didn’t plan on: waking up to shouts, the RV moving wildly from side to side, falling out of bed. Then the darkness, running blind outside, Dad’s shouts telling us which way to turn …
But I didn’t need to remind Lexie and Mom about that part. They had lived it.