Aurora(25)

Because, you know, you never know.

Obviously, they would be fine without all of that here. It was more the principle of the thing. Here it was again, the best advance planning in the world rendered useless by poor follow-through. Thom knew he was going to be fine. He had taught himself to be a master of radical self-reliance; he could literally eat a pine tree if he had to. But he was worried about everyone around him. Clearly, he was going to have to lift them all on his back and physically carry them through this ordeal. Fine. So he would.

“Sorry I snapped at you.” They headed for the car.



Eighty-six miles took just over eighty minutes. The stretch of road was long and flat, cutting a line more or less straight southwest from Provo through Spanish Fork, Eureka, Jericho, and eventually to the five-hundred-acre parcel that had once been the property of the United States government. The Little Sierra Missile Range had gained notoriety in the early ’80s when it was proposed that it be converted into one of the nation’s first Dense Pack ranges. Dense Pack was a configuration pattern developed under Reagan in which ten to twelve hardened silos for LGM-118 Peacekeeper ICBMs would be evenly spaced along a north–south line, all within a few miles of each other. The thinking was that since incoming Soviet missiles would likely come south from over the North Pole, a long string of identical missile placements stood a greater chance of survival in a first-strike scenario, rather than scattering them in easier-to-target one-offs spread around the country. The idea met with intense opposition when it was pointed out that, perhaps, grouping twelve silos in the same place made it far more likely for enemy firepower to be concentrated on that one area. Local and not-so-local residents were unamused, and the idea was dropped. The Little Sierra Range was therefore poorly named, as it had only ever served as home to a single nuclear missile silo.

But what a silo it was. It was built in the early 1960s to house a Titan II missile, the largest and heaviest ICBM ever built by the United States. The missile was a hundred and three feet tall, weighed a staggering 330,000 pounds, and was the first U.S. missile that could be launched from an entirely subterranean complex. The silo was a hundred and forty-six feet deep and fifty-five feet in diameter, super-hardened with twelve-foot concrete-and-steel walls all around. It was a gargantuan structure whose only aboveground portion was a large, circular lip that sat a modest three feet above the ground, like a very thick and wide manhole cover.

The Little Sierra silo was decommissioned in 1991 as the U.S. government made the move to smaller, more lightweight missiles that required less in the way of infrastructure. The silo and land surrounding it, all five hundred acres, sat empty and unpopulated, except for a revolving series of twenty-four-hour marine guards, who may have had the most boring job in the entire United States military, which is really saying something. It wasn’t until the late nineties that the government realized there were actually people crazy enough to buy these things.

Little Sierra was first picked up by a real estate speculator whose gamble that the surrounding badlands could be made into usable housing developments proved resoundingly wrong. After his bankruptcy, the next buyer up to the plate was the Chickasaw Tribe, of nearby Oklahoma, which was looking to invest some of its casino profits in large chunks of real estate in nearby states. After one visit to Little Sierra, they decided to look somewhere else. Finally, in the early aughts, the government found a willing buyer in Thom Banning, who had, post-9/11, correctly predicted that the market for survival bunkers was something worth keeping an eye on. He’d picked up the land for $1,000 an acre, a steal no matter how barren, and after $30 million in renovations, he now owned one of the world’s premier post-apocalyptic survivalist enclaves.

The twin Suburbans pulled up to the main entrance. The manhole-like cover that had once sat just over the nose of the Titan II had been removed, replaced by a discreet concrete guardhouse, which was set into a rolling hillside that had been graded, landscaped, and irrigated with care. It was an imposing entrance but not a terrifying one. The only other aboveground structure was a six-thousand-square-foot modernist chateau nestled into the artificial hillside beside the gatehouse. It was designed to shelter a single family, Thom’s family, for as long as things stayed somewhat docile out in the world at large.

But the real masterpiece, for when the shit really hit the fan, was all underground, inside the converted silo, which was now fourteen floors of scrupulously conceived subterranean living space.

Thom’s car was in the lead and pulled up to the gatehouse, where they were met by ex-Major Jimmy Rutland, casually dressed in fatigues, Kevlar vest, and wraparound sunglasses, with a semiautomatic weapon slung across his chest. Ex-Major Jimmy made no move for Thom’s door. He knew to let the man open it himself and get out. Thom bounced out of the car and came forward to address Jimmy with a grim we’re-all-men-of-the-world expression.

“Jimmy.”

“Mr. Banning. Good to see you, sir. Sorry for the circumstances.” Jimmy wasn’t sorry at all. Jimmy had been born for this day; he’d enlisted on his eighteenth birthday, trained his way up through anti-terrorism security forces in the marines, and was making serious money in the private sector when Thom had recruited him.

“How’s it looking?” Thom asked.

“Clear and fine, sir. Glad you all made it OK.”

Thom turned and gestured to the others, in the cars behind him, that it was OK to get out. They did, the kids spilling out of both cars and taking off across the dirt road, which wasn’t actually dirt at all but DryCrete, a weatherproof material made to look and feel like an unused country highway. The kids didn’t care. They raced up the hill and rolled down its lush grass.