Andy shook his head. "B ... busy. S .. sorry." He then laughed.
"a.s.shole," Emma said then turned to Cody. "Andy is joking. He"ll be by tonight. We"ll get pizza."
"Pizza?" Cody asked.
"Yes and we"ll ..." Emma stopped talking when the alarm on her phone beeped in a siren style mode. She grabbed it. "Oh, G.o.d. Yellowstone erupted." She jumped up and swooped the baby into her arms. "We gotta get to the hole. We have four minutes."
"Run, Gam, run," Cody said.
Emma raced toward the front door and Andy stopped her before she ran out. "Andy, what? The ventilation pipes need to be checked before we go down there."
"I ..." Andy nodded his words. "G ... got. Go. Re-retract from b ... below."
With shivering breath, Emma nodded. "Hurry. You don"t have much time. The cloud is on its way and it will sweep you away."
When she said that, Cody screamed.
"It"s ok, baby, we"re gonna be okay." Emma, cradling the child, raced back to the kitchen. She opened the bas.e.m.e.nt door, pulled it closed behind her and ran down the steps.
She ran across the unfinished bas.e.m.e.nt to the laundry room and to the tall white cabinet next to the washing machine under the single well window. It wasn"t a cabinet at all. When opened it exposed a metal door.
Emma quickly punched in her code. The door slid to the right and she went inside. With the baby she raced down a twenty-foot hall until she arrived at another door. That one was open. She ran inside, sealed the door, and set down the baby.
The room resembled a family room. "Stay here, Cody. Play with the toys."
Cody nodded, and Emma ran into another hall. She arrived to see the ventilation system already on its way into the shelter. Andy had beaten her to the punch by manually lowering it.
"Come on, Andy,"
She looked up and down the halls and didn"t see him. She had to worry about Cody, so she returned to the family-style room to hold her granddaughter.
She waited.
One minute, two.
Surely the cloud pa.s.sed. But no Andy.
After ten minutes, Emma knew he wasn"t arriving.
"I guess it"s just you and me," Emma told Cody. "Thank G.o.d I have you, baby. Thank G.o.d." She kissed the child. "Maybe Andy came in one of the other entrances. What do you think?"
Cody nodded; she didn"t seem scared at all.
"Let"s go check."
The "hole" was huge. It was actually as big as Emma"s ranch home, but built underground. A family-style room, a kitchen and eating area, two sleeping rooms, showers, and toilets. The hydroponic room and the storage facility, which held the tank of water, were bigger than the other rooms combined.
There were two other entrances into the "hole" other than the house.
One was a door in the storage area. It led down a small tunnel to a hidden hatch in a nearby storage barn. The other was located at the far end of the shelter, another tunnel that went to the yard. It was a steel tube, much like the ones in the bunkers of the eighties.
But Andy was nowhere to be seen.
Emma gave Cody some cookies and turned on a cartoon for her. After about twenty minutes, the child grew restless and Emma grew irritated.
"What the h.e.l.l, right?" She asked Cody.
"Right."
"It"s been close to a half hour. Jeez. Let"s find him." Emma sighed, grabbed Cody, and left the shelter. She secured it again behind her, and they emerged back into the bas.e.m.e.nt.
She heard footsteps above her head, and she walked back to the kitchen, holding the baby.
"Andy," she called out as she opened the door. "What the heck. This was a drill. Yellowstone erupted. You died." Her final words trailed as she saw Andy cringe and then noticed her father standing there. "s.h.i.t."
Stew folded his arms and looked at Andy. "So you"re encouraging this?"
Andy lifted his hands.
"You know, Daddy," Emma said, "he is encouraging because he"s smart. He knows why civilizations didn"t survive when they should have. The Bog People. Ice Age Eskimos. All died in the middle of doing something because they weren"t prepared enough. That won"t be me."
"Uh, huh." Stew nodded. "You aren"t an Ice Age Eskimo. Or a Bog Person."
"I certainly hope not," Emma said. "I have no plans to die in an extinction level event."
"You"re a nut," Stew said.
Andy laughed.
"Oh, you think that"s funny?" Emma asked. "No sleep over tonight, pal."
"Emma," Stew scolded. "This behavior with Cody ..."
"Will save her life one day," Emma cut him off. "So there."
"Maybe you should have let Val watch ..."
Emma"s loud gasp silenced Stew. "Bite your tongue." She gave a quick look to Andy. "Did you hear that? He wants the spy to watch my granddaughter. Uh ... no, Daddy. I don"t even like when she visits him. He speaks Russian to her. Lord knows what vile things he is saying."
"Um, Em?" Stew said, "The Cold War ended. Val is a doctor, not a Russian spy, and you need to stop this."
"I hate him." Emma folded her arms. "I hate him, Andy, and he hates me."
"He does not," Stew defended.
"Daddy, he was the one who had me committed."
Stew growled, "Because you wouldn"t come out of the G.o.dd.a.m.n hole!"
"I thought the world was gonna end!" Emma yelled. "And he used it as his excuse to get me away because he knew I found his picture on the "net." She faced Andy. "I found his picture on the internet. He"s a missing spy. I"ll show you."
Stew tossed his hands in the air. "Let it go, for crying out loud. You are both grandparents to that child."
"I don"t trust him."
With another growl, Stew turned. "I"m leaving."
"Why are you here?" Emma asked.
"I don"t know now. I forgot. You frustrate me. I"ll be back." Stew walked out the back door.
Emma chuckled. "And he calls me crazy."
Andy laid a hand on her cheek. "You ... you"re fine."
"Thank you." She tiptoed up and darted a kiss to Andy.
"I ... want ... t... to see ..."
"The spy picture of Val?"
Andy nodded.
"Absolutely. But first ..." She placed Cody back at the table, pulled the cookie decorations to her, and then grabbed her phone, resetting it. "We do the drill again. Right this time."
Hartworth, Montana
Val kissed Heather on the cheek as he put on his coat. "I will be making rounds at the hospital, so I will not get to see you two off."
"Thank you," Heather said, "for letting Roman get time off."
"Have fun." He stepped to Roman and kissed him on the forehead. "Drive safely and call when you arrive."
"We will, Father. Thanks."
Val grabbed his briefcase and walked from the clinic, waving one more time.
Heather spun to Roman. "All right, what"s left to do?"
"I did all the work, we can leave as soon as Vivian gets here."
"Sweet."
"Hey ..." Roman leaned to her. "We got about fifteen minutes. No patients. Wanna do something we"re not supposed to?"
"Fool around?" Heather asked.
"No." Roman grabbed her hand. "The bas.e.m.e.nt."
"Seriously?" Heather asked. "You mean the stuff that your father is obsessed with?"
"Yeah, aren"t you curious as to what it is?" Roman asked.
"You bet." Heather looked at her phone. "Ok, let"s look, but we don"t have much time. We don"t want Vivian to bust us down there and tell your dad."
"Cool, let"s go."
Roman led the way to the bas.e.m.e.nt, leaving the door open. He turned on the light. Sitting center were several boxes and two old trunks.
"Why do you suppose he is obsessive about this?" Heather asked.
"I"m betting there are pictures in here. He doesn"t talk about living in Russia at all."
"Was he a doctor there?" Heather asked.
"Yeah. He was a lot older than my mother." Roman began going through the boxes. The flaps weren"t sealed. "Books."
Heather checked another box. "Oh my G.o.d."
"What?"
"How freaking old are these boxes?" She lifted a tape from one. "These aren"t even VHS; they"re the ones before it."
"Oh wow. Beta?" Roman laughed and took the tape. "This is so great."
"Let"s try the trunks." Heather walked to the first trunk. They both knelt on the floor.
"It can"t be all that secretive," Roman said as he turned the key. "He left the key in the lock." As he opened the trunk lid, the key fell out. He didn"t think much of it, he"d get it later.
Inside the trunk were books, some clothes, and a few pictures.
Heather"s hands rummaged at the same time as Roman"s. "What"s in here that he"s so protective over?"
"I don"t know. Maybe there"s a diary or an old girlfriend."
"Oh, maybe he had a wife in Russia."
"You think."