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Lila’s fear slid further into irritation — a welcome change. “How the hell should I know?”
 

The room strobed in a series of bright flashes. Lila’s breath caught, her instinctive mind interpreting the flashes as an attack. Then she realized the silent flares were the flickering of emergency lights. There was one in each room, mounted near the ceiling. Their glow was bright white, unidirectional, harsh. Glare from the living room light cast everything into sharp-edged shadows and brightly flooded facets of light. The contrast was garish, but better than the dark.
 

“Thank God,” Piper said.
 

Lila looked over and saw her stepmother on the couch’s other side, near Trevor. She was happier to see Piper than she felt comfortable realizing. It was as if she expected Piper to save them all — or thought her dead, and a ghost in the dark.
 

But she was there: real, corporeal,
welcome
. Piper was the only reluctant killer among them. The only one who’d proved she had what it took to defend the castle now that the man of the house had gone missing.
 

“Piper,” said Lila, her earlier certainty returning. “Someone is trying to get in!”
 

“It’s just an outage.”

Lila’s mind searched for a way to disprove her. Then she had it. “The cameras! Check the cameras!”
 

“The power is out,” said Trevor. “Duh.”

Piper peeked around, fishing a flashlight from a drawer. She turned it on and speared the dark corners.
 

“What are you looking for?” Heather asked.
 

“The power is out,” said Piper.

“Wow. You really
are
good at this.”
 

“It shouldn’t be out.”
 

Heather cackled. “Another brilliant observation.”
 

“She’s just trying to help,” Raj said.
 

Heather cocked her head at Raj. “Don’t you have some homework to do?”
 

“There’s a generator,” said Piper, still searching. “Why didn’t the generator come on?”
 

“Whatever.” Heather gestured around the room. “We have light.”
 

“For a while. But the batteries. What about the batteries?”
 

“Check the junk drawer.”
 

“Piper,” Lila said, “
we need to check the cameras.
”
 

“Take a load off, Lila.” Heather gestured toward the couch. “You’re sounding awfully pregnant.”
 

“Maybe we
should
check the cameras.” Raj looked furtively around, appearing almost as afraid as Lila felt, his brown eyes wide. His head ticked between Heather and Piper, unafraid of being mocked as long as they could all get back to abnormal bunker life.
 

Lila, watching Piper search for an unknown something, wondered if she should go to Raj. But even more, she thought that maybe
he
should come to
her
instead of peeing his pants.
 

“I don’t mean
flashlight
batteries,” Piper said. “I mean, I think there’s a battery backup for our power supply, for the whole bunker. I saw it in the books. It’s in with the generator. But … why hasn’t the generator kicked on?”
 

“I can’t believe this happened. I can’t believe the power went out
now
.” Heather slouched onto the couch she’d just offered Lila. “Right in the middle of my favorite episode of
Three
’
s Company
.”
 

“I wonder if I have to switch the batteries or the generator on manually,” Piper said to herself. “How would I do that?”
 

“Hurry up,” said Heather, making herself comfortable. “If I don’t get my beans and rice, I’m reporting your ass to the manager.”
 

Clicking noises filled the room. The overhead lights came on.
 

“That’s the batteries, then.” Piper exhaled with relief, then listened. The room was quiet. “But still no generator.” She looked around. “We need to turn stuff off. Conserve the power, at least until morning.”
 

“Who made you Mr. Fix It?” Heather said.
 

“Mom … ”

Trevor stopped as the sounds of drilling started above, at the bunker’s front door.

CHAPTER FOUR

Terrence stopped. The kitchen clamor abated by two thirds as he killed the big drill and set it aside, leaving only the portable generator humming outside. The last time Morgan had fired up the generator, the hippies around the home had come forward, thinking themselves invited to plug in their own appliances, possibly charging their dead (and surely useless) cell phones. That hadn’t gone well for the hippies, thanks to Morgan’s guns and Cameron’s fists. This time, they were all giving the engine a wide berth.
 

Terrence swore.
 

“What?” Morgan asked.
 

“Just kicked on.” Terrence pointed at something in the complicated electronic lock on the broom closet’s rear door.
 

“What did?”
 

“Backup power. Like I figured.” He shook his head. “I don’t know whether to admire whoever built this place or hate them. Both, I guess.”
 

“But you killed the generator. Cut it off.”
 

Terrence looked up. “I kept it from kicking on automatically, but if the people in there know what they’re doing, they can get right back around that and run it manually. But I think we’d hear that, so it’s probably not the generator. Must be a battery backup, as I thought.”
 

“You said you could drill through it.”

“I’m not talking about the
lock
’
s
backup. I’m talking about something more central. A contained power source.”
 

“But temporary,” said Vincent, butting in.

Morgan turned. His hand went to the butt of his gun. Terrence and Vincent had already been together when Morgan had arrived, along with Cameron and the old man, Dan, who acted like Cameron’s father. Vincent was a big black man with giant arms who looked like a Marine. Terrence was slightly lighter and a lot leaner, but still strong. He looked like a specialist or an engineer — someone trained to
fight
like a Marine, with the brains for special-ops challenges like disarming bombs and opening doomsday bunker doors. Morgan didn’t like that the two were comfortable as a team and could clearly function without him.

“Enough time for them to grab their guns,” Terrence said to Vincent, who nodded. “And enough light for them to do it by.”
 

Christopher came to the front of the group. “You don’t even know there’s anyone in there.”
 

“They’re in there, all right,” said Terrence, now fussing with the lock, not looking back.
 

“We should just drive the truck in here.” Christopher looked out at the lawn. “Smash it in.”
 

Terrence snickered.

“What?” said Christopher, offended. “Your idea is so much better?”
 

“First rule of plunder,” said Terrence. “Don’t destroy what you’re trying to plunder.”
 

“We could hook a chain to the door. Pull it off its hinges.”
 

“Those hinges?” said Vincent, pointing.
 

Morgan looked. The door didn’t appear to have any hinges. For some reason this struck Cameron as funny, and he snickered.
 

“What the fuck you been doing that’s so brilliant, then?” said Christopher, glaring at Cameron.
 

“I’m just yelling and being an asshole. That’s my contribution.” Cameron looked around the group then back at Christopher. “Oh, no, wait. That’s yours.”
 

Christopher surged forward. Vincent stopped him before he could reach Cameron, who smiled while chewing his toothpick.
 

Morgan turned back to Terrence.

“Can you still get in?”

“I told you the power would probably come back on. It just makes things a little trickier. Did you see that little light — ” he pointed at the lock, “ — right
there
come on a minute ago?”
 

“No,” Morgan said.
 

Terrence looked behind Cameron, where Dan was standing quietly. The man really did look like Cameron’s father — not in his features but in his behavior. He had curly, going-gray hair where Cameron’s was straight and brown. He was broad where Cameron was thin and wiry. But he was always right by the kid when they were in a group, like a burly protector.
 

“Dan. You hear a clank earlier? When we were around the other side?”
 

“Hard to hear over the drill.”

“The tolerances on this door are almost perfect, but I know I saw pistons top and bottom before when peeking around its edge.” Terrence slapped the door then pointed a thin flashlight into the gap. “They’re engaged now, but they weren’t when I started drilling. I should be able to manually disable the lock in the door, but as long as those pistons are in place, our options are limited. I can’t get a saw through that gap even if I could cut through those things, which I doubt.” He pointed at the door’s bottom then at the doorframe above. “Best I can tell, there are redundant locks top and bottom, probably slid into place by a solenoid. When backup power is on, they’re engaged. But when it’s off, they open.”
 

“Why?” said Morgan.
 

Terrence shrugged, pushing his poufy black hair into place above his ear. “Something goes wrong inside the bunker in an emergency, backup-power situation, last thing you want are hard-to-access locks barring your escape.
This
lock here — ” he tapped where he’d been drilling, “ — stays engaged regardless, and they may even have something simple inside if they want extra protection, like big manual deadbolts. So the place stays secure. But if the power goes out and stays out, there are bigger problems than the door. Air, for example.”
 

“There must be vents.”
 

“Sure. But nothing to push air through them.” He shrugged again. “I’m sure there’s a workaround. Maybe someone can ride a stationary bike in there to spin a fan; I don’t know. All that matters right now is that as long as they have backup electricity in there, there’s no way I’m getting this open. That’s where part two of the plan comes in.”
 

“So now what?” Morgan asked

“I keep drilling. Take out the main lock, if I can. But as to the rest … ?” He trailed off.

“How long?”
 

“Maybe half an hour. If I can get through it at all. I’ve never seen a lock like this.”

Morgan nodded and turned to Vincent.
 

“Head around to the side of the house, and get started,” he said.
 

Then he looked at Terrence, who’d again lifted the drill and pressed it against his in-progress hole in the door’s metal.
 

“Is this going to work, Terrence?” he asked before the drill reclaimed its cacophony. “Or are we just wasting a lot of time?”
 

Terrence nodded. “Oh, it’ll work. If there really are people behind this door, we might be about to kill them all … but we’ll get in, all right.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Piper ran to the control room to check the cameras. The sounds of drilling coming from above were unmistakable.
 

“What’s going on up there?” Raj yelled.
 

“Shut your curry hole,” Heather shouted back.
 

“I just want to know — ”
 

Heather caught Piper before she reached the control room, stopping her, even though it was the least sensible thing she could possibly do. “Are the cameras going to still work with the power … you know … retarded?”
 

“I don’t know.”
 

“We have to see what’s going on! If there are people trying to get in up there, will they — ”
 

“
I don
’
t know, Heather!
”
 

Resentment washed over Piper in a wave. She shook Heather’s hand off and marched into the small control room with the others behind her. She felt like a prisoner who’s been put in charge of a prison then blamed by the other inmates for everyone’s confinement. But she hadn’t built this bunker. She hadn’t known the ships were coming as Meyer somehow had. This was her prison, same as theirs.

She calmed herself and thought:
What would Meyer do?

If Meyer were here, he’d probably laugh at the fact that anyone was trying to break in. What were they, stupid? The bunker was a fortress.
 

Piper had peeked into the terrifying armory Meyer had left in their care. She wouldn’t touch the automatic weapons or boxes of what she feared were grenades and other explosives — a likely reason the armory’s door was as thick as a bank vault’s. Just being in the room scared her silly. But there were handguns in there, too — plain old automatics and the requisite ammo. Even if their assailants did somehow get in, they’d be able to use
those
weapons just fine.