It was hard for Wills to remember what that purpose was, now. Once Abramson was gone there had been no one to discuss it with, and over time the nature of the reason had eroded in the silence of the complex. Sometimes he sang or talked to himself, but that wasn’t the same as having someone else there. Rather, it made him think of all the stories of prisoners who went slowly mad in solitary confinement, left alone with themselves and the sound of their own voice for too many months. Or too many years. It would be years for him if nothing changed, if he didn’t find anyone, if no one came. Major Adam Wills. That was who he had been, who the military would say he still was, serving his country deep in the bowels of the earth, a quarter mile underground beneath tons of rock and steel-reinforced concrete, somewhere in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. Where he had been now for five long years, waiting.

He thought about that word. Waiting. He stopped walking and stood in the center of one of the endless corridors and thought about it. Waiting. For what? It seemed to change with the passing of time. At first, he had been waiting for the wars to be over. Then he had been waiting for someone to come to relieve those on duty in the missile command center who were left alive. Then he had been waiting to be let out because he couldn’t get out if someone in authority, someone who could tell him it was time to leave, didn’t key the locks to the elevators from the surface.

For a long time after he knew that there might be no one left in authority, he had simply been waiting for his transmitter signals to raise a response from any source. He no longer used a secure code. He simply opened all channels and broadcast mayday. He knew what was happening aboveground. The cameras told him much of the story. A bleak, barren countryside, a few wandering bands of what appeared to be raiders, a handful of creatures he had never seen before and hoped never to see again, and endless days of sunshine and no rain. Colorado had always been dry, but never like this. It had to rain sooner or later, he kept telling himself.

Didn’t it?

Waiting for it to rain.