Beneath

Dennis

When North Church came down in pieces from the aftershock of the second earthquake to hit Portsmouth that was the final sign I needed.

The Beginning of the End as far as I was concerned.

Built in 1854, North Church's steeple could be seen from all over Portsmouth. Not any more.

To live underground had first entered my mind when I resided in New York and we were hitting record temperatures - over 110 degrees at least once a week from May to October.

My book, The Survivors Bible, was almost as hot as the weather, so I had my mojo. I decided to move north.

Portsmouth turned out to be a godsend- at least for the first year. Cooler temperatures because I bought a condo by the river, my book sales keeping me afloat while I was writing for the magazine.

My girlfriend, Chelsea, a financial analyst, was equally charmed by my new digs and came up from Washington for a week at a time, and we enjoyed one another’s company when she wasn’t crunching numbers on her computer.

But then Gaia went to work defending her planet. We humans were destroying it. In a frenzy, it seemed, we were killing everything- trees, rhinos, mountains- it didn't matter what, humans were destroying it. Gaia was pissed and we all felt her anger.

Tornadoes hit us where they had never been before, occurring with increasing frequency. Five months earlier Albany had been nearly wiped out by a twister that came out of nowhere. Albany was not that far from where I was living. Extreme weather came that we had never seen before. There was an increase in earthquakes from all corners of the planet. Floods and fires. Water and flames don’t mix, but they sure make odd neighbors. Most of the U.S. had been experiencing droughts for the past two years, including up here in New Hampshire. Meanwhile, places like New Brunswick and Quebec up north of us were awash with floods. Rising water along the Canadian coastline had displaced thousands of homeowners, sent them fleeing inland.

MY YOUNGER BROTHER, Danny, and I had been born up here. At Durham our father had taught civil engineering at the University of New Hampshire.

Now Danny was an unemployed construction engineer. His wife Iris and their daughter, 15-year-old Aggie, both worked part-time at the local Dairy Queen. Both our parents were gone. Danny and I tried to help each other out.

I had been writing part-time for over ten years for Steve Richards’ CHOOZE! array of magazines. I wrote for CHOOZE to Survive! My reputation as a martial artist, survivalist, nature-lover, etc. had grown because of the magazine and had thus enabled me to become a best-selling author on the subject of staying alive on this freaky planet.

A fellow author, Bill Blatt, had turned me on to the idea of underground living. He had a cool subterranean hangout in Colorado in the Rockies where I visited. I thought I could duplicate it in New Hampshire.

Back to pre-industrial living is recommended for the post-industrial future, Bill quipped, as we shared beers in his comfortable ‘one-wall-is-free’ (the side of a cave) secret sanctuary that overlooked a stunning Rockies canyon.

I realized you can build your survival home from sandbags, concrete, cordwood, straw bales, and more. The choice of materials was open to my imagination and my ability to find the resources I needed.

My research showed that underground homes can be warm in winter, cool in summer, and if constructed well they have plenty of natural light, and are safe from hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, fire, radiation fallout, gunfire; and they can be quiet and reasonably comfortable. I would use wood or coal heating and cooking stove, and add battery power storage to keep my computer and phone functioning. I would build a decent green house and supply water for drinking and bathing from the ample underground water around Great Bay, where I was planning to build.

No more electric bills, water bills, gas bills, I bragged to Danny.

You’re gonna spend $100 thou just to build the place, he shot back.

I’ll be free. I’ll be safe.

"You’ll be buried, Danny scoffed. You think Chelsea’ll ever live underground, Den? A high maintenance babe like her."

Chelsea’s not high maintenance, Danny. She’s simply classy. Understand the difference?

"You’re dreaming, bro. I’d give her two days underground."

Danny may have been right. I had mentioned it a few times to Chel, especially after the tornado in D.C. where she has her office. It’s possible she hadn’t really taken me seriously, but at the same time she knew that some of the bankers she worked with had built a multi-million dollar underground haven in case End Times really happened. They were going to all live together like an extended Armageddon party scene. Chelsea had an open invitation.

WE STARTED LATE IN the summer. Just Danny and me. Occasionally Aggie hung out. It was a secret. I still wrote for CHOOZE! In my spare time. I made my own schedule. I know how to manage deadlines. My material almost writes itself these days. Actually, I was living it. CHOOZE! didn’t have much to say about Trump and Clinton and the corrupt government that was running the country into the sewer. We were the magazine that suggested ways to survive after those crumbums had been deposed or obliterated. Danny, meanwhile, was unemployed like millions of other Americans, so he was mostly available whenever I needed him.

How do you go about building a relatively low budget underground home? You explore beautiful – free – wilderness land – state land – where no one is allowed to build. You check for good ground water resources, stable land, plentiful fish and game and wild vegetables. You get one guy you can trust who owns a six-year-old red Chevy pickup truck, bring a pick and two shovels, and start digging.

That’s how Danny and I got started. One shovelful at a time.

From there, it’s all about chopping up logs, bringing Polyethylene plastic rolls in the Chevy, sinking posts into the holes we dug, placing beams over the girders, boards over the beams, followed by roofing felt, poly and earth.

It’s simple to write a paragraph about a process that took four and-a-half months just to get the framework done, a lot of it at night. We worked deep in woods where no one visited anymore. No hunting allowed on this state property.

AT THE END OF A HOT day of building my secret future home beneath the ground, Danny would drive me home- my condo in Portsmouth-which was being foreclosed because I refused to put any more money into it.

We would sit in his pickup in the parking area, drink some beers, and talk. Our view through the windshield was of the well-lit community swimming pool, all the young lads and lasses in scanty swimwear, consuming amber liquid, laughing inanely, trying to escape the triple digit temperatures and the gnawing expectation of more drastic earth changes to come.

SO THURSDAY WE’RE GONNA hook up the generator? Danny asked me.

Pick it up at ten. We could have some breakfast at the ‘O’.

I’ll eat with Iris and Aggie.

Yeah, okay.

You know, I could get Gary and some of his homeless buddies to help us.

No way, Danny, I told him. As far as I was concerned, Gary and any friends of his were ne’er-do-well shitkickers. "I told you- not one word to anyone about my place. Nada!"

Yeah, yeah, he said. I haven’t said shit. Even Iris doesn’t know where it is.

Good. Keep it that way, please.

I took out my wallet and got two twenties and a couple tens. I handed it over to him.

Danny looked at it, and then at me. Look bro, I was hopin’. .

I know, I know, Danny. Look, I had to pay over ten thousand for the generator this morning.

No work for over thirteen fuckin’ months, Den. Aggie’s medical—

I put my hand up. I knew we both had that stiff, lachrymose expression that I hated when I felt it on my face Wait, Danny. I understand. I see everything so clearly that my eyes ache.

I know, man.

What do you know?

What you been sayin’. The fuckin end. You’re right. I have nightmares all the time. California burning up one day, flooding the next. That flood last week in Maryland. Who ever heard of a hurricane mixed with a snowstorm? Now that volcano in Vancouver. It coulda been here.

There’s not gonna be a volcano in New Hampshire, Danny. Something else.

Well, what was that you were telling me about the Ossipee Mountains?

Ninety million years ago a volcano created the dike there.

Oh, he said. I thought you said ninety fuckin’ years.

"Ninety million, Danny. Don’t worry, Mother Nature has a lot of different weapons."

Something else, like what?

If I knew precisely I’d tell you.

And if she don’t do it, the fuckin government will. Fuckin weaponized weather.

Yeah, I said, They won’t be able to control that shit, bro."

But you know something, or you wouldn’t ‘ave said it. Fuckin’ earth just belching up hot shit wherever, whenever.

Hawaii.

Danny got irritated very easily these days, which wasn’t like him. He had always been the laid back son in the family. I totally understood his frustration. The world had not been kind to him in the past year. What is it, one of your dreams? he asked me.

Interpreting dreams is not simple, I told him. It’s not like watching the news, bro. Something’s gonna happen because the earth has an agenda. Like a schedule. Got to do with the sun, gravity, the rest of the galaxy. Things get lined up out in the stars and then something happens down here.

Whatever. But that doesn’t say I can’t try to save my little girl.

Of course it doesn’t, man. Look, Danny- this is what’s gonna happen. I’m gonna get the magazine’s severance package. I’ll get you more money.

When’s that gonna happen? I hated it when Danny felt he had to beg. We talked about the situation almost every day, and then he started again as if we had never discussed it.

Probably before the end of this month. My agent is working on those foreign book rights, too. It could be big.

Danny thought about it. Didn’t say anything.

Aggie’s a tough girl, I said. She’s been doing better. She was playing soccer last week.

Portsmouth Regional might not take her next time.

Why the fuck not?

My insurance is. . . They’re looking at it.

The fucks.

Fuckin nephrosis. Sometimes things seem normal. The next day she’s swelling up.

He lit up a cigarette. His eyes were moist.

Danny, you haven’t smoked all day. Don’t start now, I told him.

Don’t fuckin lecture me, Dennis. This is the least of my vices, man. Go inside and eat your fish taco.

TRYING TO BE INVISIBLE to my neighbors in the swimming pool, I went up the steps where I found a notice from the County Sheriff plastered across the door telling the world that my condo was being repossessed for failure to make mortgage payments. A date for repossession was indicated. By the time that day came I hoped to be under ground for real. I ripped off the sign and took out my keys to unlock the door. My cell started ringing.

It was Chelsea, the voice I needed to hear.

Hey Chel—where are you?

Her provocative, pleasing, playful voice in my ear, all the way from Europe. A miracle. "Dennis... baby, I’m here. Where are you?"

Not close enough, sweetheart. I just got home.

"I’m exhausted, Den. Need you. I was in Brussels until after lunch. Back in London now. Did you hear about the earthquake in the Mediterranean?" Anxiety tightened her throat.

I’ve been working all day in the Hole. What happened?

She told me. The news had become scarily common these days. Six point eight. Off Algeria. It killed some fishermen, but not much else. I hope. It was deep.

I put my taco bag on the counter. I was suddenly ravenous. Whether my appetite had something to do Chelsea’s voice and the picture I held of her in my mind, or the aroma coming from my fish taco, I couldn’t say for sure. I looked at my watch.

Isn’t it pretty late over there, Chel?

Meetings. And after meetings meetings. I was talking to Clive Nailor about you.

I was unwrapping my taco. Who’s he?

An editor at the Guardian, Chelsea said. He said they might be interested in someone with your portfolio.

I laughed. "My portfolio? Fighting bears and eating ants?"

I heard Chelsea’s laugh from all the way across the ocean.  My chest over ached how much I missed her. The Brits are really getting into survival, she told me. "You could write your next book and work for the Guardian. Maybe a column"

I had another call. Hold on, Chelsea. Don’t hang up. I gotta take this. For a second. I switched to the owner of the magazines I wrote for. Hey Steve. I’m talking to Europe. I got a job offer from the Guardian. Can I call you right back?

It was Steve Richards, the owner of the CHOOZE! magazine empire, a man in his mid-forties, a little overweight, looking like Alec Baldwin with his beard, probably pacing as he addressed his speakerphone.

Good synchronicity, Dennis. Call me. I want to talk about your current employment.

I continued unwrapping my fish taco, my cell phone wedged between my shoulder and ear. I’m sure you do. Ten minutes, Steve.

I switched back to Chelsea, -Babe? You there?

I’m trying to get out of this dress. I could imagine her delightful squirming.

Ordinarily, I’d be happy to accommodate you, I said, but. .

Sweetheart, I’m thinking of working out of London. If you could make the move, it would make   my decision much easier.

I shook my head. Definitely not what I wanted to hear. You know how well I get along with Brits, Chel.

Oh, Dennis, how can you, of all people, generalize like that? I suppose I was pleased that she viewed me as a tolerant, egalitarian man of the world. Her father once had me confused with that guy who wrestles crocodiles on the tube. 

Since I had that rather dramatic tiff with Paul with the three names. I’m sure you recall. I was referring to a pompous, very drunk arsehole who had confronted me at my book fair appearance in London six months earlier. He had fallen flat on the floor when the