Fallen Land Read Online Free Page B

story: a mother, father, three sons living in a ramshackle house. The children armed themselves, told their parents enough was enough, that life on the terms they were suffering was not worth living. Following a two-day standoff the parents yelled out the window to say they were no longer hostages, then knelt down in front of their teenage children, accepted the gun to the temple, and rolled backward, descending into death before they could watch the boys turn the guns on themselves. MOTOR HOME MASSACRE was how Channel 7 described it, the blond anchor smiling as if he were reporting the mass surrender of terrorists. How Paul admired that family, the logic of the boys and the courage of their parents.
    If not a traffic helicopter overhead then it must be the police tracking a fugitive racing circles through subdivisions, trying to catch her before she can slip down a rabbit hole or into the woodland thickets of undergrowth that enclose the platter-flat river flowing west of the city. Ten minutes pass and the vibration does not change in intensity or frequency as the helicopter lingers over his neighborhood. Unless he is mistaken, unless it is all in his imagination, the machine is just above the house, watching and waiting for him to betray his position, perhaps even using thermal imaging cameras. Holding his limbs rigid he draws shallow breaths and imagines his temperature dropping, making him invisible to whatever equipment they may be using to locate him. The lead lining of the bunker should obscure him but there are always new advances in sensing technology, ways to see what is supposed to remain hidden. He cannot understand how the authorities found him so quickly since no one knows where he is—not Amanda, not his sons, not his parents. Everyone believes he has moved out of the house, found an apartment, is putting his life back together, starting over from the beginning with nothing but his hands and his tools. And yet the
thwacker-thwack
vibration comes in steady waves, moving down the wall, shaking the frame of his bed in the dark vault of the bunker. Let them seek him with their blindfolded eyes. In his retreat underground he is the only one who can see.
    As Paul was building this house he discovered the foundations of a nineteenth-century farmhouse the widow Washington told him had burned down long ago. At the edge of the woods he uncovered the original storm cellar, still intact, wooden doors latched, and beyond them stairs leading down to a vaulted stone ceiling, the entrance obscured by shrubs and accumulations of dead leaves. After cleaning out the debris, he repointed the walls and vault of the cellar, knowing there must be a way to use such a space: he would build a fallout shelter, a bunker, a place of safety for his family. It seemed so logical that when Amanda asked him why they needed it, he lost his temper.
    “Read the headlines! Watch the news! Look around you, babe! Because of the base this city will be one of the first to go. When I was a kid dad told me that in a nuclear war we don’t have to worry because in the first twelve minutes the whole city is going to be obliterated. That was supposed to make me feel like, I don’t know, some kind of reassurance because we wouldn’t be suffering in the aftermath. You have to understand, I’m planning ahead. I’m trying to protect you. We’re going to survive whatever this thing is that’s coming down the pipe.”
    “What thing, Paul?”
    “The
future
. We’ll ride out the apocalypse together, safe underground.”
    Amanda looked at Paul then, for the first time in their relationship, as if she did not trust him, perhaps did not even recognize him. He can see the way her brow drew together in a demonic-looking point. Over and over he tried to explain it to her but she had never been convinced. Now, left alone, he could write a book about all the ways his wife failed him, and in retrospect that was the first moment he knew she was turning away from