The Fall(38)

Once I was dried and dressed, my survival instincts flared up. I needed to get a feel for my surroundings. Know where I was, and at the very least the layout of the building I was hiding inside. Something told me we’d be here awhile.

The inside was huge. Not just big, but when I said someone could park a commercial jet inside, I hadn’t been exaggerating.

Despite the amount of space available, the living quarters were relatively small. Beside the bedroom and bathroom, there was a thin closet that housed a couple Tshirts, a pair of jeans, coveralls and a pair of work boots. Nothing else remarkable.

The bathroom had been simple. A shower—no bath—with a vanity/sink combo, and a toilet. There was a narrow linen closet in a corner that stored towels, extra toiletries and toilet paper. Once again, nothing out of the ordinary, and it was easy to forget the makeshift apartment was actually inside a garage on steroids.

Just outside the living quarters was an office space. Two trestle tables formed an L-shaped desk with two monitors and a large CPU sitting on the floor underneath. There were leads that attached everything and a modem that flashed continuously, but there wasn’t so much as a paperclip sitting out of place.

Ironic that his inner sanctum seemed so structured and yet he lived his life in chaos. Coping mechanism or something else? I wasn’t sure I’d ever find out.

Along the wall directly adjacent to what I was now referring to as the office, were two locked filing cabinets. Standard issue, four drawers—similar to what you’d find in almost any workspace in America. And I knew they were locked after trying each of the drawers with a healthy yank.

Fruitless.

Not that I expected someone like Michael to be careless and leave anything unlocked. Even in a fortress like this, the man had some very serious trust issues.

Further along the eastern wall was what I decided to call the kitchen. It had another trestle table with two fold-up chairs pushed up against the wall. It was missing the nice appliances of the house but it was functional. An old refrigerator that looked like it might have been an original part of the layout was sandwiched between the sink and the countertop.

Seeing the kitchen made my stomach rumble. The provisions I’d packed in the cooler had been abandoned last night, and I had no idea how long Michael would be gone. It’s not like I could text him and ask him to go through a McDonald’s drive-thru on his way back.

So, I decided to hunt for some food. Surely someone this organized would have some sort of staples around here somewhere. Tinned vegetables, non-perishables, crackers—that sort of thing. In case the end of the world came or whatever else men like him were afraid of.

The vast wide-open space worked in my favor, revealing another cornered off space similar to the living quarters along the opposite wall. It had also been sectioned with drywall, its door surprisingly unlocked as I twisted the handle.

Inside was his stash. Shelves of bottled water, MREs and assortment first aid items. It seemed that maybe he was actually ready for the end of the world, or at the very least a civil uprising.

I tore into one of the MREs, so hungry I didn’t care what I was eating and devoured the spaghetti without heating it. It wasn’t great, and I had never eaten pasta for breakfast, but my stomach and I weren’t fussy.

Following my entrée was water, the Aquafina bottle crushed in my hand as I gulped the liquid. Well, at least I knew I wouldn’t starve or die of thirst while I was here. I took what was left in the MRE—what looked to be Cheez-its crackers and Skittles—and continued to eat while I walked.

The rest of the warehouse was relatively benign. There was a workbench with one of those fancy red toolboxes mechanics had, but nothing else remarkable. Except for an old wooden sailboat mounted on a trailer. While it seemed completely out of place like the fridge I’d seen in the kitchen, it looked like it had come with the space and been kept. Michael didn’t seem like the type of guy who liked to spend weekends fishing, so I imagined it hadn’t seen the water in a long time.

It was when I reached the very front—or perhaps it was the back, it was hard to tell in the dark last night which way we’d entered—that I discovered a big black fuse box. I had seen a few of them around, positioned in different parts of the warehouse. I assumed they connected the sophisticated security system Michael had wired throughout the place.

The sensors were discreet but I’d noticed them, as were the thin black wires running along the grey exposed-brick walls. This one seemed more important that the others, larger and more industrial looking, almost like a small locker.

Getting up onto my tiptoes so I was able to reach the latch and open the front. The door swung open and revealed three analogue meters running slowly, similar to a regular electrical meter, as well as a numerical touchpad. Nothing out of the ordinary except there wasn’t any way a representative from the power company would have internal access.

So what the hell was it?

I finished off my Skittles and went to grab one of the fold-up chairs, using it as a stepladder to get a better look.

With my fingertips, I traced along the thin bead of caulking sealing the border where the dials were held. It didn’t look right, the revolutions running twice as fast as the display below it indicated. So whatever I was looking at was a rouse, a fake and some kind of decoy. But for what, I hadn’t worked out.

My fingernails picked at the white caulking, the silicone protesting against my nails as I pried it from the wall.