Ella
I’ve been a part of some fucked-up things before, but this is quickly becoming the most fucked-up thing that has ever fucked. The British guy seemed chill, but I should have listened to the Levin brothers’ warnings. They told me he was dangerous, and all I could think about was how polite he was. Lesson learned.
We get onto the highway, and at some point I fall asleep. All the excitement has left me exhausted. I wake up when the vehicle starts to slow, and we go over a speed bump outside what looks to me to be one of the world’s most rundown motels. Dawn is breaking, and the sky has that faintish pink but mostly gray hue that comes with a day where there is probably going to be some light rain clearing to a fine morning.
“We’re going to stay at a roadside motel?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes,” Aiden says mysteriously.
The car is garaged in a small concrete building, a garage that’s been weathered by decades of deprivation, or looks that way, at least.
We get out, go around the back, and underneath a lean-to structure that provides shade and I guess protection from spying eyes, there’s what looks like the doors to an ice cellar. Aiden pulls them open. There’s no ice. There are stairs.
We go down.
The air should be stale and damp down here from all the moisture that trickles into places like these over time, but it’s crisp and clean smelling. It’s being purified and circulated. Interesting.
We go through another set of doors and find ourselves inside a home.
“Oh, my god, it’s a bunker!” I don’t mean to squeal, but this is quite exciting. It seems to have all the creature comforts you can imagine: a television, couches, rugs, a kitchen. It’s all slightly dated, but I’m not complaining about that. Retro is fun.
There are four bedrooms, too.
The pilot is no longer with us. We must have dropped him off along with the doctor, who decided that he didn’t enjoy being shot at for money as much as he used to, which is a very reasonable response.
“I’m glad you like it,” Aiden says. “Because for the next thirty days, this is where we stay.”
“What about Ethel?”
“What about Ethel?”
“What if he goes for her? You said he destroys everything people love. I love her.”
“I don’t think he knows that,” Aiden says reassuringly. “She’s being taken care of, don’t worry. When we all left to find you, we got in a dog sitter. Eric knows we are not at home. He’s not going to go for the dog.”
That does make me feel better. He actually answered the question. Other people in my life would have told me a dog doesn’t matter. They would have shamed me for giving a shit. And they wouldn’t have made sure she was cared for. I feel those happy tears coming again, and I know I can’t indulge them because nobody here is happy, but this is amazing to me.
“What is it, Ella?”
“We’re going to win,” I say.
“Hmm, what do you mean?”
“There’s no way we don’t. You’re so nice, and you think of everything.”
Aiden looks like he just got winded. “You really think that, don’t you.”
“Yes,” I say.
Aiden
What a sweet thing she is. I was just pondering how I had let my family fall into complete ruin, how we lost Teddy, and how weare all now underground hiding from a psychopathic billionaire, and here Ella is telling me what a wonderful job I am doing, and seeming to mean it.
The vents in the place are integrated into the motel. It really is a feat of engineering. Places like this are truly hidden. Plenty of rich people build their escape bunkers either on very private property, where signs of construction are obvious and can be seen in satellite records, or they put them under their homes, or in places where these sorts of things are looked for. The advantage of this unassuming location is that nobody has ever cared about it. Construction here, while very much on the record, blends in with all the other commonplace construction. I believe we are hidden as well as anybody can be hidden.
“Ew, David!” a young woman shouts somewhere above us. It’s hard to tell what she’s so incensed about, but she’s clearly unhappy.
“This computer has the old solitaire on it!” Luke says. “I bet it has… oh, my god, it has Doom.”
