Survival

Roxanne flew into Omaha from Chicago, rented a car there and started driving out on the flat Nebraska prairie; it was about three hours to her destination, which was an old underground missile silo that had been converted into condos for survivalists. It had armed guards; it was plain from the outside, but fancy on the inside. She was one of twenty condo owners there, but she owned hers because her father had died and she had inherited it. She was now coming out to Nebraska to see what it was like, and decide whether she wanted to keep it. She was more than familiar with her dad’s desire to provide for everyone if society as we know it becomes unstable and unsafe; it was an obsession for him, but he was a millionaire, and this condo was his way of taking care of that. She herself did not have such an urge to have a hideaway bunker surrounded by concrete, way out in the middle of the prairie, and she had had some offers from people who wanted to buy it, but she had never even seen it, so she decided to take a trip to come out and take a look at it. Besides, she was tired of Chicago. She’d lived there all her life, and it was easy to get stuck in a rut, especially with friends. She needed to get away.

She liked Nebraska already. On the plane some wealthy rancher had started to hit on her and chat her up, and tell her about his thousands of acres and so many head of cattle, and all this stuff. He’d bought her a drink and insisted that she come out and visit him someday on his ranch way out southwest of Omaha, somewhere similar to where she was already going, no doubt. She actually liked the guy, whose name was Roger, but as she talked to him all she could think about was how different he was from the people she knew and talked to almost every day. He was wealthy, yes, everyone was wealthy, and that was a relief, because she didn’t like the feeling that some guys chatted you up just because they sensed you were wealthy. This was not an issue with Roger. But he was also much more direct, and refreshing. He told her almost instantly of his innermost feelings. And he understood exactly about the silo condo.

The idea of having it way out in the prairie would be that it would be easier to protect, and harder for people to come after them and disturb them. Roxanne could certainly relate to this, as she’d always felt vulnerable in Chicago, especially after 9/11, and even walking down the street to a grocery store. If you had money, you could alleviate this, say, by having your groceries delivered, but still, if you didn’t feel safe in your home, it grew on you, and she was tired of that. Out here, she felt safer right away; there just wasn’t anyone else around, except a few people like Roger.

When she got to the condo, they let her in, and a guy named Carl showed her around. Carl was bald, tall, muscular, and aggressive. Carl was the owner and the entrepreneur, and he also clearly liked her, although he mentioned, while he was talking, that he was already married. Carl had bought the old missile silo and had built the condos to perfection, and was very proud of them; he was building even more, having had great success with these. Each condo had plenty of room, and was well stocked, but because they were underground, instead of windows, they had a screen in a prominent place, where a window would be, and on that screen, a picture of the prairie from a webcam outside, so that, as far as one could tell, one was looking straight out at the prairie. Carl claimed that if you watched the screen, you would occasionally see a hawk coming after its prey, little mice or voles that skittered along at the base of the grasses. Roxanne asked him if he could stream in a webcam from Chicago, say the Miracle Mile, with its taxis and horns and street noises. Or, Fairbanks, where they had a webcam that showed extreme blizzards and whiteouts at all times of year except maybe July. She was just messing with him, but he took her requests very seriously, and promised to get back to her as soon as possible.

The silo setup was actually very impressive. It had a gym, and a pool, and just about everything they’d need to keep on going, if the world really went toward unstable. It had a room entirely filled with guns. All twenty owners, Carl said, were wealthy, and were concerned about that time, and the inevitability of that time, when they’d need to get away from it all, and have a safe place to get away. One owner had finally sold his condo, and bought a place in New Zealand, thinking that ultimately, even Nebraska wasn’t all that safe. In a sense, it was using some of their millions to calm that gnawing fear in their subconscious, that whatever they had in their primary residence, their mansions in Connecticut or California or wherever, it wasn’t enough.

She could look at it as a vacation spot, a place where twenty very wealthy people, or families, came to get away from it all, and she could enjoy it as that, except that it was mostly empty, almost all of the time. Carl was here, and he was here a lot, by his own admission, since it was his project, and he was the owner, with the primary job of watching out for the twenty owners and being responsible for their coming and going. He was available, he said, to help her sell hers, if that’s what she wanted. He was also more than eager to hear about her life in Chicago, as he’d been a friend of her father’s; he’d been one of his first investors. The survivalist side of him, the speculation about how society would become destabilized, how people would need to get far away from the centers of power and money, how fortification, invisibility, and remoteness would be keys to survival, were all very familiar to her, as she’d actually heard her father discuss these things with him over the phone, and discuss them with others. There was a community out there, of people who indulged their fears, who did what they thought they had to, to ensure their long term survival.

Carl was very attentive to her needs. He made sure she was happy in her condo, in the day she was to spend there, and kept asking her if there was anything else he could do for her. He offered to take her to town; it was fifteen miles away, a small ranching town, and didn’t have much, but he’d at least show it to her. No thanks, she said, settling in and trying to get a sense of the place. At one point a guy named Dave came around and introduced himself; it was right around the time they were talking about the screen, and Dave promised to try to see what webcams would be available.

Dave seemed to be the only other person around; he owned one of the other condos. Dave also was very interested in Roxanne, and let her know that fairly quickly. Dave was younger than Carl, more handsome, and single. He was a wealthy hedge broker from Silicon Valley, and had come out to the bunker to get away from it all one weekend about a month ago, and simply hadn’t returned to California. He owned the condo, he liked it here, and life was too crazy back in California. He was looking into ways to do his job online, from his condo, so that he wouldn’t have to go back, but he was a millionaire, so he didn’t have to go back anyway. If he was done with California, he could simply sell out on everything, and move out here.

But of course, it was lonely at the silo. Carl tolerated him, and made it possible for him to stay as long as he wanted, but they hadn’t had too many people who actually lived there, and weren’t used to the routine of having people around, coming and going, getting mail, going out for entertainment in the evening. There wasn’t much entertainment. They didn’t know the neighbors. The wide prairie was full of millions of stars at night, but after about a month of starry nights, one began to know the television channels too well. Dave was both too eager to meet and talk to Roxanne, and completely afraid that he was coming on too strongly to her, which he was. She talked to him for only ten minutes, and still got an overwhelming sense of someone who was completely at sea, cut off from his trading world in California, unable to be really happy or stable here, and having millions of dollars and literally nothing to do with it. He had computers; he had toys; he had everything a person could need, except company.

What Roxanne really wanted, what she had come this far to get, was to be absolutely alone, in a completely safe bunker underground, and to feel the absolute silence of being way out away from everyone. Eventually Carl and Dave both left her alone, and let her have that silence. It was late at night, and she was left with the webcam of the prairie in the screen window, and the steel furniture with comfortable leather cushions. She watched the gentle wind in the prairie grasses at night; it was the only movement anywhere. She didn’t actually care about the screen; she would never live here, so it didn’t matter whether it showed the Miracle Mile, or Fairbanks, or the prairie. She also didn’t care that much for either Carl or Dave, though they both seemed to be infatuated with her, and willing to do almost anything to please her. She had been married, for almost twenty years, and was divorced two years ago, before her father had died, in a very unhappy process. Her husband had been wealthy, neurotic, unwilling to have children, and never quite knowing himself, or, to put it better, never quite at peace with himself. This was the thing about Dave that bothered her too. It was ok, to her, to have a subconscious that told you you always had to be safe, you had to have a bunker with guns, you had to take care of the dark future that was certain to fall upon us. But to not quite know who you were, or what to do with all your money, that irritated her.

The following day, Dave came and found her again, and they talked. Dave, of course, claimed he was willing to try new things. He could sell out, in California, and start a new life, virtually anywhere, and provide perfectly well for her, and anyone else, in virtually any situation. He gave her a report on what could be done with the webcams, and all the different possibilities; he was big on technology, and knew that technology made virtually everything available to everyone, even here in a remote bunker. He was bright, aggressive, and assertive; that’s how he’d made his millions. Why was he still single? She couldn’t guess. But it was suspicious, a guy this rich, this smart, still single after all these years.

It was ironic to her that she’d been determined to have a day to herself, completely alone, and yet she was feeling overwhelmed by these three rich men, going back to Roger, doting on her with all this attention. She had broken up with a suitor back in Chicago; he’d come along too soon after her divorce, and wasn’t right for her. At 38, she was feeling a desperate desire for a child, but back in Chicago, the people she knew, even her first husband, didn’t even consider it. Out here, in the fresh air of the plains, it seemed ok to consider it again. But again, the missile silo itself was sealed. Whatever fresh air it had was shipped in. Her walls were concrete, with the one picture of the prairie glowing at her.

The following day she had to leave, but both Carl and Dave came around to make one more play on her. Carl said that although he was married, that would be temporary, and he was an entrepreneur who would be successful the rest of their days. She told him to go home to his family and take care of his business there. Dave, of course, was cheerful, and promised her the world. He could literally take her wherever she wanted, and live whatever kind of life she desired. This was totally unsatisfying to her, so she just told him no, and wondered how many women would be grateful to hear what she had just heard, or to have these handsome millionaires giving them attention. On the plane from Omaha to Chicago, she got two more texts from Roger, who still hadn’t given up, and was interested in seeing her on any conditions.

It was Roger who won her in the end. He made up an excuse to come to Chicago, and spent a weekend wooing her and taking her to shows and restaurants, all her favorites. His overriding sincerity and charm won her over, and she eventually married him and moved out to Nebraska; she bore him a daughter and he was a faithful and loving husband and father. She kept the condo, as she was now much closer to it, but she didn’t go there often, and Carl was rarely there when she went. She lost touch altogether with Dave, though someone said he was in New Zealand, as a lot of American survival fanatics were. If you really want to get away from it all, and you really have the money to do it, you can’t get much farther away than New Zealand. But to Roxanne, the desire for a totally safe concrete bunker, away from it all, just wasn’t that strong. It reminded her of her father, so she kept it. But now that she had a ranch of her own, and a daughter who was growing up on horses, she began to let go of some of the fear that had preoccupied her dad in Chicago. She didn’t need a webcam of the prairie; she already had a real prairie, right outside her window.

(2-17)