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The air was stagnant, the room getting warmer, despite being underground. There were lights, very dim ones running on batteries, so they could see one another in a weak yellow glow.
Sel watched Dex, staring up at the ceiling, and he looked to be praying. Indio paced, and Bennie sat close to Sel. “If he gets in here another way, some way we don’t know about, you get behind me and stay behind me.”
Indio threw them both a nasty look after Bennie said that. Sel settled onto the couch in front of the big television, thinking until his brain hurt. “We’re going to run out of air.”
“Yeah, big news,” Indio spat at him.
Ignoring him, Sel said, “They had to have found them both by now. It’s been hours.”
“Found what, Sel?” Marius asked.
“I left Binx’s tracker and the tablet under a tree right by the front entrance.”
Marius said, “Right, but that doesn’t give them a code. If, by some miracle, they figure out we’re underground, that is. There are a lot of obstacles to get to us, and if it takes too long…”
“Way to be positive, Marius. You have two men out there likely losing their minds over you. Can’t you…I don’t know, think of something to do instead of this doom and gloom?”
Avery agreed with Sel. “You could start with getting us loose.”
“Right. That’s right! We haven’t looked for spare keys. Everyone spread out and look for the keys, or knives, or something that we could try to pick locks with.”
Indio, surprisingly, agreed with him for once. “Don’t need knives. They won’t help. Find me a couple of forks.”
Sel rushed to the kitchen, where he pulled out drawers. In the last one on the right, there were utensils, and he pulled out two forks, handing them over to Indio.
Indio took the forks and bent all the tines down except one on each fork. Then he started with Dex, having Dex sit forward so he could better reach the lock.
Looking through more drawers, he was disappointed to not find any knives, but Brooks likely hid those immediately, knowing that when he was gone, they could easily get up, hop around until they got weapons.
Then, in the small pantry, the door almost hidden, he found a lever coming out from a shelf, partially hidden by boxes of cornflakes. “Hey! Someone come here!”
Marius was through the door. “What’s up?”
Dex was right behind him, rubbing his wrists. “He got you loose! That’s great.” Sel pointed to the lever. “That’s…something. Should we pull it?”
Marius jerked his head toward the door. “Get back, Sel.”
Instead of arguing, he thought of Bennie’s words, and did what Marius wanted. As soon as he was clear of the pantry, Marius pulled the lever, and they heard the gentle whoosh of another door opening. “What is it?”
Dex came out and said, “It’s the works for the place. The fans, air filters and such. And…computers.”
Sel rushed in with them, and off to the left was a line of monitors, each showing one camera position in the bunker, one outside the back, another outside the front. The three of them saw all the people outside the bunker trying to get through the back entrance, they let up a cheer and hugged one another as the others filed into the room.
“Well, damn,” Jim hollered. “They know we’re here!”
“Who knows computers?” Marius asked. “Maybe we can get them a message.”
Sel knew a little, but Dex sat in the chair, pulling over the keyboard. “Prince showed me some tricks. Not a lot. We’ve pretty busy.”
“I’ll just bet,” Marius teased.
“Not just with that, you dick,” he said as he laughed and started working his fingers on the keyboard.
The monitor directly in front of the computer lit up and showed the box to enter a password. “Okay, here we go.”
“We don’t know the password, my dear cousin,” Marius told him.
“What do you think Prince showed me? How to play solitaire?”
