He took everything, but put down the raincoat, “at least not until we get closer to the surface. And we’re not going that far. No point in hiking it twice.”
“Bats freak me out,” she said, and when he blinked at the seeming non sequitur, she pointed to the towel. “Bat protection.”
“Ah.” He hadn’t considered that the tunnel might be home to bats, but then again, he didn’t have hair for them to get entangled in. He slipped the rifle over his shoulder, its weight familiar against his back.
Tash pointed to the candle and Ted’s lighter. “Is this because you want to conserve the batteries in the other flashlights?”
“Nah,” he said. “Your freaky thing is bats, mine is hypoxia.”
It was her turn to laugh her lack of understanding. “Oh-kay...?”
“See, anytime you travel through a cave or a mine or an underground passage that hasn’t been used in a while, you want to test for bad air,” he explained. “Easiest way is the Bic test.”
Although Ted’s lighter wasn’t even close to a cheap, plastic Bic. It was heavy and well-made—a twenty-four-karat piece of jewelry with an inscription in what looked like French and, yeah. Those were definitely large diamonds studding the sides and top.
Thomas flipped it open and lit the candle, then stretched out his arm to put the brightly burning flame into the shadowy room beyond the open cast iron doorway, testing the air. The candle didn’t go out, so he squeezed himself through the little door, too, turning on the flashlight to get an even better look around. The space was smaller than he’d first thought—closet-sized, about two meters square—with another of those solid blast-proof doors, like the one at the bottom of the stairs at the pod’s main entrance. This door, however, was tightly shut. Sealed.
“Whoa,” Tasha said, joining him. “It’s a bomb shelter mudroom.”
She was right.
“There are hooks on the wall,” she realized. “To... hang your hazmat suit, after going out to survey the atomic wasteland?”
Thomas laughed. “Probably.” It was entirely possible that had been part of the original early 1960s sales package. Like there’d be an imminent return to normal after nuclear annihilation.
He handed her the candle and the lighter as he turned his attention to that sealed door. It was identical to the one in the main pod, only this one likely hadn’t been opened in years. Possibly not since Prince Ted the First renovated the place.
Nah, he was wrong about that. It opened easily, as if it had been kept well-oiled and maintained. Which made sense. The only thing better than a private sex-pod—for someone who regularly made use of a private sex-pod—was a private sex-pod with a super-secret backdoor.
Thomas hoped this boded well for the tunnel itself—that it, too, would be in equally good repair.
But unlike the front landing and stairs immediately outside of the other blast-proof door, there was no sensor in the escape hatch tunnel to pick up his movement and turn on lights. Probably because there were no lights to go on.
The beam from Thomas’s flashlight bounced off the curved walls of the pipe, fading into the distance until the darkness swallowed it up.
“Whoa,” Tash said again as she followed him. “You were right about the pipe.”
Yeah, this was the exact type of escape exit he’d guessed this era shelter would have.
The pipe was larger in circumference than he’d imagined, though. If he stayed in the very center, he could stand straight and walk tall. Made sense, since both Prince Teds Uno and Dos were above average height, too. Don’t want to make a crown prince crouch.
Tasha held the still-burning candle up and out as they started up the slight incline. Its flame burned merrily, much to his relief. “In theory,” she said, “if there’s a lack of oxygen, the candle will go out...?”
“Not just in theory,” he reassured her. “If we hit bad air, it’ll absolutely get weak or even extinguish.”
“And if that happens...?” Tasha asked. “We retreat, right? Back to the pod? I’d like to know in advance, in case...” She cleared her throat. “I’ve heard that... well, hypoxia and you are not exactly best friends.”
Thomas sighed. “Why am I not surprised someone told you that story?”
“Stories, plural,” she told him a smidge too gleefully. “Probably because it’s the only thing you’ve ever been bad at as a SEAL—and well, that’s not your fault. You can’t train to be better at something like that, can you? A biological reaction. Your body responds the way your body responds.”