teeth and works to control his breathing, fighting his constant claustrophobia.
We’re just rats in a cage , Travis thinks. The Mount Weather facility was designed to support two thousand people. He guesses at least three times that live here now. The top officials and the Congress and their rich friends have lots of space, he heard. They have their own private apartments and tennis courts and movie theaters. Everyone else lives and works in overcrowded dormitories, locker rooms, office buildings and cafeterias that are spartan, gray and washed out by fluorescent light that never seems bright enough.
He tries not to think about the overworked ventilation systems struggling to supply fresh air for this many people. Every time he has a headache, he believes it is carbon dioxide poisoning.
Stay focused. Follow the girl.
The walls here are painted with a red stripe, indicating he has reached a mass transit zone. Giant letters and numbers spell out his location in code. The air feels humid here and stinks like raw sewage. A crowd of people waits for the train, reading or working on electronic tablets. Behind them, a wall sweats, beads of water glistening on its surface. Travis guesses a wastewater pipe broke behind the wall. He hopes someone is repairing it.
What if the repairmen died on the surface and never made it down? What if the mains burst and the underground chambers fill with water and human waste?
We’ll drown like rats in a toilet, that’s what.
The terror of his claustrophobia takes so many forms, and it is neverending.
Every night, as he tries to sleep to the sound of a hundred other men snoring, he remembers the Infected charging across the White House lawn and envisions the same scene playing out three hundred feet over his head. In his mind, the Infected break down the fence and overrun the guards and pound their fists against the door to the complex, built thick enough to withstand a nuclear blast. Thousands of them mill around the buildings put there to communicate with the Situation Room, now empty and gathering dust back at the White House.
In chambers carved into rock deep inside the earth, Travis would never know he has been buried alive. The leadership would never tell him. He and the other refugees would go on doing their jobs, cut off from the surface, until one day the food runs out. Then the competition for resources would begin.
It won’t matter if you’re a Supreme Court Justice or the Secretary of State or the President of the United States . If we get cut off down here, we’ll end up eating each other.
Travis believes it may be inevitable. One day, the Infected will migrate out of the cities. They will discover this complex. The electrified fence will not stop them. Human security systems provide deterrence based on an assumption of interest in self-preservation. The carriers of Wildfire do not understand that concept. Only the Wildfire Agent itself does, and it is all too happy—another homocentrism, as it does not feel anything—to sacrifice any of its hosts, like pawns, to win its never-ending game of dominance and survival.
The question is whether Wildfire has Mind. Is it intelligent, or just blind programming? Another thought that keeps him up at night.
The public address system bleats a muffled message about the cafeteria being open to second shift. The noise startles him, making him forget his fears and focus again on following the woman. A different cheerful automated voice announces the monorail is approaching the station.
The woman walks away from the crowd, stepping onto the track platform and turning so he can see her face. Just as he remembered, she is a stunning creature, tall and frail and beautiful.
Travis pauses, feeling breathless, wondering what he is going to say. How does one apologize for what happened to her? Perhaps that is all he should say: Forgive me.
She stares straight at him, mouthing words he cannot hear but his brain translates as, Save me .
We’re just rats in a cage , Travis thinks. The Mount Weather facility was designed to support two thousand people. He guesses at least three times that live here now. The top officials and the Congress and their rich friends have lots of space, he heard. They have their own private apartments and tennis courts and movie theaters. Everyone else lives and works in overcrowded dormitories, locker rooms, office buildings and cafeterias that are spartan, gray and washed out by fluorescent light that never seems bright enough.
He tries not to think about the overworked ventilation systems struggling to supply fresh air for this many people. Every time he has a headache, he believes it is carbon dioxide poisoning.
Stay focused. Follow the girl.
The walls here are painted with a red stripe, indicating he has reached a mass transit zone. Giant letters and numbers spell out his location in code. The air feels humid here and stinks like raw sewage. A crowd of people waits for the train, reading or working on electronic tablets. Behind them, a wall sweats, beads of water glistening on its surface. Travis guesses a wastewater pipe broke behind the wall. He hopes someone is repairing it.
What if the repairmen died on the surface and never made it down? What if the mains burst and the underground chambers fill with water and human waste?
We’ll drown like rats in a toilet, that’s what.
The terror of his claustrophobia takes so many forms, and it is neverending.
Every night, as he tries to sleep to the sound of a hundred other men snoring, he remembers the Infected charging across the White House lawn and envisions the same scene playing out three hundred feet over his head. In his mind, the Infected break down the fence and overrun the guards and pound their fists against the door to the complex, built thick enough to withstand a nuclear blast. Thousands of them mill around the buildings put there to communicate with the Situation Room, now empty and gathering dust back at the White House.
In chambers carved into rock deep inside the earth, Travis would never know he has been buried alive. The leadership would never tell him. He and the other refugees would go on doing their jobs, cut off from the surface, until one day the food runs out. Then the competition for resources would begin.
It won’t matter if you’re a Supreme Court Justice or the Secretary of State or the President of the United States . If we get cut off down here, we’ll end up eating each other.
Travis believes it may be inevitable. One day, the Infected will migrate out of the cities. They will discover this complex. The electrified fence will not stop them. Human security systems provide deterrence based on an assumption of interest in self-preservation. The carriers of Wildfire do not understand that concept. Only the Wildfire Agent itself does, and it is all too happy—another homocentrism, as it does not feel anything—to sacrifice any of its hosts, like pawns, to win its never-ending game of dominance and survival.
The question is whether Wildfire has Mind. Is it intelligent, or just blind programming? Another thought that keeps him up at night.
The public address system bleats a muffled message about the cafeteria being open to second shift. The noise startles him, making him forget his fears and focus again on following the woman. A different cheerful automated voice announces the monorail is approaching the station.
The woman walks away from the crowd, stepping onto the track platform and turning so he can see her face. Just as he remembered, she is a stunning creature, tall and frail and beautiful.
Travis pauses, feeling breathless, wondering what he is going to say. How does one apologize for what happened to her? Perhaps that is all he should say: Forgive me.
She stares straight at him, mouthing words he cannot hear but his brain translates as, Save me .
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