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When the people in Japan and New Zealand stopped posting on the message board, Garcia knew it was time.
She’d seen the signs. She’d been seeing them for weeks—years, even. All this extreme weather couldn’t be explained by climate change scientists (and she knew, because research was what she did, and she’d researched the hell out of climate change). All the oil spills weren’t coincidences (she might not be an FBI agent, but she was in law enforcement, and she’d seen enough not to believe in coincidences). And there were more disappearances every day—disappearances that just couldn’t be explained by all the serial killers her team hunted every day.
She wouldn’t go so far as to say that it was the Rapture. If it was, she knew a few people who should be gone. But some people were. Including some people who should have listened to her.
But no one had. And now it was too late, at least for some of them.
Other people was vanishing from the message boards now. Australia. The few people who managed to worm out of China. India. Russia.
It was all happening so fast. Her throat was dry. She typed one final message, even though they hadn’t listened until now, probably still wouldn’t listen. But she had to try to warn them. “It’s starting,” she wrote, even as she got to her feet, limbs shaking in her preparation for flight. “Hide, or escape, or something while you can. I don’t know what will be effective. But don’t just sit around and wait to die.”
She squeezed her eyes shut as she clicked “post,” not wanting even to see what she’d written. Then she took a deep breath and ran out of the room.
“We have to get down to the basement,” she announced to the bullpen as she reached it, her hands opening and closing helplessly with nothing to hold on to.
Morgan, her darling man, turned with a pile of paperwork in his hands, and frowned at her. “The basement? What’s going on, Garcia?”
She looked around the room, hoping she’d gotten everyone’s attention, and realized, with a sinking heart, how empty it was. She thought she’d been taking advantage of a momentary pause in conversation to make her announcement, but there just wasn’t anyone to make conversation. She must have lost track of time. It was late. Most of them had gone home.
But at least her team was still here, her beloved family, having just returned just that day from a case in Florida. Morgan had his pile, Reid was hunched over his desk, Emily and JJ were just returning from the break room with steaming cups of tea. She looked up at the offices, swallowing. Hotch and Rossi were there, though they didn’t appear to have heard her. They weren’t the only ones around—Anderson was arguing quietly on the phone with someone, and Agent Lapp had also been interrupted at her paperwork and was staring at Garcia with a frown—but the room was close to the emptiest she’d ever seen it.
“I don’t know what’s going on, not exactly,” she said, her words tumbling over each other in her rush to get them out. “But something’s happening.”
“What are you talking about, Garcia?” Reid asked patiently.
She bit her lip, took a deep breath, and then said it. “The world is coming to an end.”
That got their attention. Reid and Lapp both stood, talking over each other, and Emily and JJ started rushing toward her, almost spilling their tea, both trying to get her attention. They were trying to talk her out of her belief. Obviously, though, it wouldn’t work.
She shook her head at her two dear girlfriends, then marched up the steps to the offices. Hotch first. He always listened. She knocked on his door, then opened it without waiting for a response—something she never would have done normally, but right now she was too frazzled to do anything else. Hopefully, he would realize she was being urgent, not rude.
He was surprised to see her but, as usual, he listened to her explanation. When she was finished, he frowned, but he stood up from behind his desk. “Let’s see what everyone else has to say about this first,” he said in his usual firm, calm voice.
She was still a bundle of nerves and fear that she wouldn’t be able to get them to safety in time, but she took a deep breath and said “Yes, sir,” and she did feel a little better. Hotch would take charge of the situation. He would know what to do. He would save all of their lives.
The two of them walked to the railing that overlooked the bullpen. Morgan had joined in as a bass counterpoint to Reid and Lapp’s high-pitched argument and Emily and JJ had stopped to whisper to each other. Anderson was just hunched over his desk. None of them were moving. No one was getting to safety.
The building shook. Plaques and photos fell from the walls and flew to the floor. The lights went out—instantly, no flickering. Just darkness.
“Let’s go,” said Hotch tersely, though even his eyes were wide. He opened Rossi’s door and gestured the older man out. “To the basement, now! Everyone!” Hotch snapped. His voice cut through the babble, though it had already died down—in a room full of trained FBI agents, there was very little argument.
They got their things. They went to the basement. (Reid grabbed almost everything out of the break room in his lanky arms. Morgan took the keepsakes from his desk.) Now that they were down there, where they might have been safe, Garcia was having a very difficult time holding back tears.
“Do you think there’s anyone else in the building?” she asked Hotch, even more upset by the wobble in her voice.
“If there are, they know to come to the basement after that explosion,” he said reassuringly. “We should be safe down here.”
“I don’t think that was an explosion,” Rossi said, shaking his head. The lights were on in the basement, but dimly—at least the emergency lights still worked.
“What do you mean?” asked Emily. “The building shook. It wasn’t an earthquake.”
“There was no boom,” said Rossi. “It didn’t sound like an explosion. It didn’t sound like anything.”
“It didn’t feel like an earthquake or an explosion either,” said JJ. “It was just that one short shake, side to side.”
“Garcia, what exactly do you think is going on?” asked Reid.
She shook her head. “I don’t know exactly,” she said, her voice small. “I just know that everything was changing, and now people are disappearing. And whatever’s going on up there is probably not either an explosion or an earthquake.” Her anxiety and worry were growing. No one was joining them in the basement. It was just their one small team and a couple of other agents she barely knew.
“What do you mean, people are disappearing?” asked Prentiss. “Who?”
“I don’t know. Everyone?” Garcia made a helpless gesture. “They might not be disappearing. They might just be losing their internet connections. But before I came down to get you guys into the basement I was losing contact with everyone on the other side of the planet.”
“They weren’t just sleeping?” Rossi asked.
“No. Not those people. I know when to expect them.”
“Reid,” said Hotch, cutting into the worry again with his even voice, “if this is a Biblical apocalypse, what can we expect?”
“The Book of Revelation isn’t actually as specific as people think about what the end of the world will bring,” Reid responded quickly. “In fact, it may not literally refer to the end of the world at all. It’s really a vision that a man named John—not the same John who wrote the book about Jesus—”
“Just tell us what it’s about,” Prentiss interrupted.
Reid, as usual, was not offended. “Well, first there are the four horsemen of the apocalypse—a conqueror, one bringing war, one bringing famine, and one bringing death. Then there are earthquakes and natural disasters. Then there are trumpets that start destroying land and water and starting plagues, and angels pouring out bowls that also start plagues, like in the Old Testament. Then there’s a thousand years in which Satan is imprisoned and the martyrs rule with Christ.” He ended with a skeptical nod.
“Oh, well we can look forward to that, I guess,” said Prentiss.
“Assuming we survive the earthquakes and plagues,” said JJ dryly.
“Which is kind of why I said we should come down here,” said Garcia.
“It makes sense,” said Rossi. “If we have to wait out earthquakes, or explosions, or whatever it was that shook the building, this is a good place to do it. This basement was originally conceived as a bomb shelter.”
“But what are we going to eat?” asked JJ.
“I brought the food from the break room,” protested Reid, gesturing at where he’d deposited it all on a table.
“We can’t all survive on sugar and creamer like you, Spence,” JJ said, shaking her head.
“I don’t think we should worry about food until we survive the night,” said Hotch. “If we do that, we might be able to leave the building in the morning.”
“Hotch, can I talk to you for a minute?” Rossi said, gesturing at the unit chief. The two of them went behind some shelving. Probably to discuss why Garcia was so very wrong but they should humor her. She sighed and leaned back against Reid’s table.
Emily walked over to her and threaded her arm through Garcia’s, acting like her usual sweet self, but Garcia still couldn’t help tensing. She really didn’t think Emily believed her. “So,” the agent began in a soft voice, “are you really, really sure about this, PG?”
“Really, really, really sure,” Penelope confirmed. “I’ve been keeping track of this for months. I could show you my spreadsheets if I thought it was safe to go upstairs.”
“Then,” Emily continued, still sounding quite gentle and reasonable, “where’s Kevin? Haven’t you told him?”
Garcia swallowed hard. That was the question she’d been dreading. “I did. He’s in… he’s in New York. On a farm. Trying to get ready.”
“Do you think that’s safe?” JJ asked from Penelope’s other side. She turned, surprised to see her other friend there—she hadn’t heard anyone approach. But she felt a little better now, with her girls on either side, and JJ looking like she took this seriously.
She had to shake her head. “I don’t think so. He does. He’s been talking about getting off the grid, disconnecting and living off the land, and he thought this would be a good way to prepare… but I just think he’s vulnerable, out there in the middle of nowhere.” She was not going to cry. There wasn’t time to cry. The world was ending and tears weren’t going to do anybody any good.
“Kevin?” Prentiss said in disbelief. “Getting off the grid? Mister second-most-super hacker?”
Garcia smiled a little at that. “I know, hard to believe. But he does have a softer side.” She shivered. “I just don’t know if I’m going to see him again, now that it’s started.”
JJ squeezed her hand. The three of them stood for a moment in silence. It didn’t last very long, though, because Anderson came around a corner of shelves with a pile of futons in his arms. “Look what I found,” he announced. “I guess I know how we’re going to be sleeping. This place seems to be pretty well stocked up.”
Garcia nodded. “I knew those were there,” she said, feeling a little jealous that Anderson was taking credit for the discovery, and a little foolish that she was jealous. “There should be… plenty of futons. More than plenty.” There weren’t that many of them here. She looked around, frowning, trying to get a head count. One, two, three, four, five, six… Hotch and Rossi were still in conference. That wasn’t everyone. “Has anybody seen Lapp?”
As if on cue, there was a loud crash, a rumble, and then a scream from upstairs, high-pitched and terrified. It wasn’t the worst sound Garcia had ever heard, but it was pretty damn scary. Morgan instantly bolted for the stairs, but stopped short before he got up three of them. “Shit.”
“What is it?” asked Reid as they all hurried to the stairs to see what Morgan saw. Instead of answering, he just pointed. The way up was blocked with rubble—smashed and splintered wood, cement, stone, and electronics. Things that used to be upstairs. The things they used to use every day.
“Are we trapped?” Reid asked breathlessly, backing away. “We can’t be trapped.”
“We’re not trapped,” said Rossi firmly from behind the group. “I told you, this used to be a bomb shelter. There are plenty of ways to get out. But we’d better stay here for tonight.”
Garcia turned around to see him and Hotch. Hotch gave her a tight-lipped nod. She tried to smile, but her mouth was so dry she couldn’t move her lips. Apparently they’d decided to believe her; Rossi was showing no signs of his earlier skepticism.
“We’re not trapped this way either,” said Morgan. “Come give me a hand with this, guys.”
“Are you kidding?” said Prentiss. “If we move any of that, it’s all going to come tumbling down. We’ll be buried.”
Morgan whirled around, scowling. “Lapp’s up there, isn’t she? I’m not leaving her.”
The building shook again, not as noticeable from the basement, but it was enough to make Garcia believe that it was the ground that was shaking, not the building itself. And it definitely wasn’t an explosion. The rubble blocking the stairs creaked alarmingly.
“It’s too late for Lapp,” Hotch said quietly. “If she’s up there, she’s been crushed, or she’s gotten out. Either way, you can’t help her.”
“No heroics, please, Morgan,” Garcia said softly. “We need you down here. I need you down here.”
His shoulders slumped, but he managed a smile. “Anything for you, baby girl.” She smiled back, but didn’t relax until he came all the way down the steps and sat down. “Okay, but now what do we do?” he said. “I am not wired to just sit here and wait.”
“We check our exits,” Rossi said quickly. “And our supplies. Garcia, you’ve investigated this shelter, right?”
She nodded quickly. “I’ve memorized the floor plans and the lists of what’s supposed to be down here. Unless the supplies have been taken out in the last couple of weeks, they should still be here.”
“You really were preparing for this, weren’t you?” said Prentiss. She almost sounded impressed.
Garcia nodded. “I had to.”
“And you didn’t tell any of us?”
She shrugged. “Would you have believed me?”
Emily didn’t answer that. Garcia didn’t expect her to.
Rossi took up the conversation again. “Okay, so some of us ned to check the room for everything we should have. Some of us set up the food and sleep conditions. Anderson and Reid will be in charge of that. Garcia, you’re in charge of inventory. Morgan goes with her. Who else?”
“I’ll go,” said Hotch. The three of them set out to make a circuit of the room. It was big, but most of it had been taken up with storage over the years, so their space was limited. Some of the doors they needed to check had boxes piled up against them. The first two had rubble on the other side, too. Hotch and Morgan quickly piled the boxes back up, blocking the exits that didn’t work.
Garcia was trying to hold down her panic. She’d thought it would be easier now that they were doing something, but with the exits blocked… how would they get out? And what must it look like up above? A horrible image—her imagination fueled by all the crime-scene photos the job had brought up on her computer screen—of Lapp crushed by fallen desks sprang to mind. She squeezed her eyes shut and pictured an adorable panda.
The third exit they tried, after they located the closet that held bottled water (they’d come back to that), proved to lead to a tunnel. Morgan took a few tentative steps down it. There was no light inside the tunnel. It was less than a minute before Garcia couldn’t see him. “Morgan, be careful,” she called, the words coming out fast and breathless. The panda was not a cure-all.
He emerged almost immediately, smiling but looking tired. “Don’t worry, there’s nothing in there. I don’t know how far it goes, though. Is there any kind of light stockpiled down here?”
“Light?” For a moment her brain wouldn’t work, the idea of her family in danger too much for her. “Light. Yes. A couple of doors down.”
“Well, let’s go find it then.” As they turned to follow the wall further along, Morgan took Garcia’s hand. His hand was warm, but damp with nervous sweat. Or was that her hand? She squeezed his gratefully, and he squeezed back.
They found the hand-crank lamps, and Morgan headed back down the tunnel, this time with light. Garcia watched anxiously as he grew smaller, then turned a corner. At least she could see the glow of his lamp the whole time. It was several minutes before he returned. “From the distance, I’d guess this tunnel goes the whole way out of the navy yard. It must end up out in the city somewhere.”
“Did you test the exit?” said Hotch.
Morgan shook his head. “I turned around as soon as I was sure I’d located it. I didn’t think it would be safe even if I could get it open.”
“Good,” said Garcia, reaching for his hand again. “You’re learning how to be safe.”
He grinned at her and switched his lamp off before taking her hand again.
They located the MREs as well, and one more blocked-up exit, before they made it back to the rest of the team. The others had pushed some furniture out of the way and were getting the futons laid out. The food had been organized into neat piles on the table. After some negotiating, Reid and Morgan went to get bottled water and Prentiss went to pick out a few MREs to share. They were in the middle of their less-than-satisfying meal when the lights went out.
“What the hell was that?” Prentiss asked into the darkness.
“Backup generators went out?” Rossi hazarded.
“That shouldn’t happen,” said Morgan.
“No, it shouldn’t,” Garcia agreed. She was waiting for her eyes to adjust, but it wasn’t happening. There were no lights down there at all. She’d researched this place exhaustively; the backup generators should be perfectly safe no matter what. Something was wrong. Her palms were sweating. No. Don’t panic. They’d prepared for this. “Morgan—”
Then the ground shook all around them. She heard something fall, with a clatter, them a rumble. Someone screamed.
“JJ?” yelled Morgan. “Was that you?”
“I’m okay,” came JJ’s response. But it sounded weak. She wasn’t okay. The panic was taking over again.
There was shuffling, then a grunt. “I got you,” said Morgan. “Come on… oof. Anything broken?”
“No,” said JJ, sounding more confident now. “Thank you. I guess that was all the stuff from the stairway.”
“What did it, fall down into the room?” asked Reid.
“Looks like it,” said Morgan. “Well, feels like it. Damn. Can we block this off somehow?”
“Morgan,” Garcia said, grabbing her chance to speak, “what did you do with your lamp?”
“Oh, uh… shit. What did I do with it?”
“Okay,” she said. “Everyone feel around. Carefully. See if you can find it. We need some light.” At least she was doing something, even if her heart was beating so hard she could feel the blood in her ears.
“I’ve got it,” Prentiss said after a minute. “How do I turn this thing on?”
“I’ll do it,” Garcia said. She groped her way over to her friend and finally got the light on, illuminating them all with a pale, sickly light.
JJ was leaning heavily on Morgan’s arm, but didn’t look like she’d broken anything. She grinned and waved weakly at Garcia. “I’m okay. Just had some stuff land on me.”
Garcia pointed the lamp at the rubble. It had rolled down to block the stairs entirely, and some of it had fallen into the room. They had probably only been saved from being crushed by a long conference table that was wedged diagonally in the opening, holding back everything behind it.
“How long is that going to hold?” Rossi said. “Morgan’s right, we need to block off those stairs.”
“Can we move the shelves?” Anderson asked, pushing on them experimentally.
Garcia shook her head. “They’re bolted down.”
“That’s probably a good thing,” said Hotch. “We don’t want those falling.”
“We should be safer if we can get to the other side of the room,” Morgan said. “Baby girl, point that lamp down the wall?” She did, breath catching in fear of what she’d see there, but the doors that should be shut were all still shut. “Yeah, let’s move our stuff,” Morgan said. “I’d feel better if we were closer to the exit that works anyway.”
“That’s the best idea I’ve heard since we came down here,” said Prentiss. “Everyone grab a futon?”
“I got yours, JJ,” said Morgan. “Everybody follow me.”
Transferring their futons over to the other end of the room—where there was even less space between the bookshelves and the walls—would have been an amusing adventure if Garcia hadn’t been so scared. They managed it, though, mostly setting the futons up between the shelves, and by the time they had finished, Garcia was more than ready to sleep.
She lay down on her makeshift bed, balling up her cardigan to use as a pillow, and tried to relax. The door leading to the one working exit was just a few feet away, by her feet. There was no difference between having her eyes closed and not. She was reasonably comfortable. She just couldn’t stop thinking about Kevin, and Lapp, and all the other people whose locations she didn’t know, and what they would do if things kept falling into the room, and if they would all start yelling at each other tomorrow…
Then Morgan reached over from beside her and took her hand. “We’ll be okay, baby girl,” he whispered. “Thanks to you.”
She smiled and squeezed his hand. Tomorrow could deal with tomorrow; maybe everything would be over by then. At least she had her family.