They did an impressive job on the car. Corrugated on top of a roll cage, heavier plate around sides, even if it wasn’t very well secured. Only a few points of welding holding it all together. It would hold for the journey, they assured me. There’s nothing like going headlong into known danger with such assurances, something like a duck and cover exercise in case of a nuclear explosion, it wouldn’t do you much good, and you all know it, but somehow dying in a group like that made it seem better. She’d spraypainted the group’s logo on each side, a dolphin on a wave, a crude rendition, but it would serve.

We set out a few hours after the sun rose. Pawel driving, Oleg with me in the back seat. Delacruz in the front passenger’s seat, but more  standing in the peak of the corrugated where he got the best visibility. Monica had made some small windows with flaps, about three inches high and with full 360 visibility. Of course, if anything got into one of those windows, a bullet would bounce around, anything more explosive, well, let’s hope they aren’t armed with grenade launchers. We each had a firearm, two rifles, three handguns between us.

Once out of the gate, we headed along our chosen path. We drove in silence until we were past the neighborhood. That’s when Delacruz looked down, despondent.

“I don’t like it. I didn’t see anyone.”

Oleg turned to me to explain.

“This is an active area, a community. There should have been people around, friendly people. They were always out, scavenging or tending crops. Now, you can see the weeds. Nobody has been around.”

“Not for a long time.”

“We’ll get answers.”

The drive turned out to be uneventful in itself, which was a good thing. That armor was a psychological thing, but impractical. I felt caged, knowing if death would come, I’d never see the attacker. It was also a little too Mad Max for my taste, but this was their choice, and I was along for the ride.

You could see signs of the Navy base from a mile away, not like you’d see guys in uniform out on leave, more like anchors placed at intersections, old deck top artillery used as statuary, a helicopter mounted outside what used to be a VFW hall. There were some people, they were out and looking like they were in good shape, clean and well-fed. A handful of people, not like a large community.

My chest was hurting. The roads weren’t exactly in great shape and I was already uncomfortable. No good position in this rattle-trap. I made do, breathed deep, meditated, squeezed my fist, but the pain was getting to me. Wasn’t this supposed to get better after a couple days?

The approach to the base was a different story. Building had been razed, the rubble cleared, an open field of vision. Nobody could get within a half mile of the place without being seen from the guard towers. The rubble had been pushed back at a consistent radius, a berm of concrete, brick and wood fifteen feet high and at least as much thick surrounded a scorched earth half circle, looking like a blast radius. They must have just driven bulldozers straight through every building in the area. There was one way through if you were a vehicle, one hole in the wall, a bottleneck.

As we passed through the gate, we slowed, and once we were 500 feet in, we stopped.

“Protocol,” Oleg said. “Far enough in that nobody’s going to ambush from behind, far enough away that we can’t make an effective attack. Let’s get out.”

Pawel opened the one functioning door to the vehicle, and got out, hands up. We all followed. Four Jeeps approached.

“Weapons,” Oleg said. He kept one arm up, and with the other pulled his gun out, laid it on the ground.

“Go on. Nobody’s going to attack us now.”

“Except them,” Pawel said.

They were already upon us when I drew mine. The Jeeps slammed on their breaks, grinding to a halt on the gravel road. A dozen Navy men were out of the vehicles and in firing position in a heartbeat, all guns aimed at me.

“Put the weapon down!” they yelled, but so many of them yelled other orders, information about us, how many, the vehicle, the other guns that had already been set down, telling all of us to get down, none of us understood a word of it, it was coming so fast.

“On the ground now!”

I didn’t know if they meant me, or the others or the gun, I should have, it’s obvious what I should have done, but I was still in shock, I was exhausted, I was dumb. One of them got around me, threw me to the ground. The wind went right out of me.

“She’s injured! Be careful!” Oleg said.

“Shut up!”

He put his knee on my back, two more had guns on my head. He stepped down hard.

“Take it easy! We’re from tidewater. She’s hurt.”

My vision went red, then black.

I remember getting a chemical suit on, checking the air, then strapping a Kevlar vest over that. I couldn’t use the door May was at, she could have ran in or given herself away in joy or fear or whatever. I don’t pretend to understand the mind of a child that’s been through what she has. I couldn’t risk it.

So I suited up, made sure my Beretta M9 was loaded, and went to the rear hatch. It opened without issue and the airlock was clear. I let the air cycle before setting foot outside. The outer hatch sealed behind me with a clunk and a hiss. It’d only open with the code I had set upon my arrival.

A quick scan and I was out from the overhang. Soft ground sluiced under my boots, sucking at the heels. It looked so bleak. So colorless and bland. The sky an empty gray. Like it was forever caught before a storm. My own breathing rang in my ears through the mask.

Someone screamed and I turned to see one of the scavengers run at me with a piece of heavy looking wood. Three shots rang out. Right in the ten ring. Hostile down. He groaned and spat blood as I resumed my search. It wasn’t too far to the other hatch. I hadn’t even wondered why there was already someone here.

Something hit the back of my head.

Darkness.

I woke up hog tied. My vest was gone as was my gun. I managed to glance around without too much movement. We were somewhere dryer. Possibly on top of the bunker itself. There were three figures sitting by a fire nearby. The sun’s down. I must have been out all day and into the next. What did he HIT me with?

I can hear them now.

“You idiot. You weren’t supposed to brain him. Now we can’t get in there,” One of them admonished.

The other responds, probably the one that hit me, “Yeah but he shot Brian! Killed him right there!”

“The moron ran at him with a piece of wood. Didn’t I explain we needed to lure him out and get the drop?” the leader, presumably, explains.

The last is a big one, not a lot of meat, just a tall build. He speaks, “Doesn’t matter. Brian was dick. Tastes fuckin’ terrible, too. We got the guy.”

A little shadow walked up to the three and sat next to the leader. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get inside, Daddy.”

May. She sat down and took of a piece of the meat roasting over the fire. The leader patted her on the head and said, “That’s okay, little petal. You got him out, at least. Isn’t your fault he’s got only a little soul.”

I’m not sure whether to be sick or angry. I tried to move my hands but a pain in my skull forced a moan out. Of course they heard it and of course they walked over to me.

“Hey, soldier. I didn’t think we’d get you out of there without actually killing my little petal. Smart of you to close that vault. Too bad, though, because you’re gonna tell me how to open it.”

Well…shit.

Up to the command center, then, to plan the mission. There’s only a couple routes to the naval base that make any sense, one skirting the neighborhood where we had the encounter, one going through a part of it. To skirt it would be easier driving, but more out of the way, use more fuel, fuel that could be put to other use elsewhere. We decide to take that route with little discussion. The estimate is about 6.5 gallons of fuel, about one less of we travel through the neighborhood. To risk a person is worse than risking fuel. We go, we make it fast, we make it back alive.

The next problem comes with the destination itself.

At this point I was confused. Weren’t we going there for a little intel, nothing more?

“Thing about navy boys,” Oleg said, “is they don’t really behave like they used to. This is an isolated base, but they have all the munitions and ships they need for a very long time. That kind of thing, it goes to your head. There is no such thing as command anymore. Their senior officer is all they have to lead them, and all that firepower. And he’s a real prick too. That base is one of the most powerful places in the world right now, with access to things we could only dream of for here.”

Pawel spoke up. “Just watch yourself. You’ll want to be conservative in everything there, every glance and gesture. Don’t provoke anyone, follow orders.”

“Monica isn’t allowed.” Ricardo chided.

She gave him the finger.  ”We had a couple of incidents,” she explained to me.

“Monica, are the vehicles ready?”

“They’ll run fine. Been working on the solar arrays, so they aren’t very fortified.”

“What can you do?” Oleg asked, in all seriousness.

“By tomorrow? Shit. You’re kidding me, right?”

“We need information and alliance immediately.”

“Alliance?” I asked.

“The Navy boys aren’t entirely friendly. They can afford not to be. But they aren’t unfriendly. They’re the playground bully. Every time we go there, it’s a matter of breaking down barriers of diplomacy. So Monica? What can you do?”

“Batteries are low enough, I won’t be able to get much going unless you want to get on the bike all night.”

Pawel jumped up. “I’ll take the first shift.”

“We leave at dawn.”

===

Can I say how much I miss painkillers? Sleeping with broken ribs means you don’t sleep, so much as work to find a comfortable position for a few minutes, doze off out of exhaustion, then wake up from the pain of breathing. Maybe I shouldn’t go. Judgment clouded by pain and sleep deprivation can get you killed.

It’s been a couple days since May showed up on my doorstep. The first night she had stayed I had heard her yelling my name in fear. I remember rolling out of bed and running to the intercom. If anything happened to her it would be my fault.

She had had a nightmare. I sat at the screens and hummed her a lullaby until she could fall asleep again. Then I moved my bed into the lab so I could more quickly respond. She woke me up the next morning singing some little song she was probably making on the fly.

Now I get up and hit the intercom to say, “Good morning, May. You sleep okay?”

She starts coughing again but pulls herself up to the intercom and responds, “Ok. I’m cold.”

I rub my face and the back of my neck, trying to ignore what she said. Of course she’s cold, but at least she has food. Right? I see her pull some of that dried meat out and start to chew. She has some cans in there too, doesn’t she have a can opener?

“Well, I have to get to maintenance. I’ll be back real quick. Ok?”

She mumbles, “Ok.”

I sigh and set about my chores. Everything is fine, as usual. The whole time I’m working she’s all I can think about. Maybe if I just let her into the airlock? It’ll be warmer, at least. I can give her things if I’m careful.

But no, I can’t do that. Obviously if I open my door while she’s IN the airlock whatever she’s carrying will just worm it’s way inside and I could be dead within a week. But maybe that’s ok. Doesn’t she deserve this place more than me?

I’m manning the air pump when I lose it. I dash my toolbox across the floor and slump to the ground. I can’t just LEAVE her out there. Shit. Maybe I can seal off an area of the bunker. I could make her up one of the spare rooms, there are enough. As long as I close the room’s vent off it’ll only exchange air with the outside, through the filters, and not contaminate the rest of the bunker.

It’ll have to work. I’m starting to feel pretty good about the idea when I take a seat at the monitors. It occurs to me that she hasn’t asked me once if she could come in. Although it’s only been a couple days, maybe she’s too polite. Heh. Who’d have thought the last kid on Earth would be a sweet one?

I’m about to hit the intercom when I spot some movement on the other camera feed.

Two men are stomping through the mud. They look starved and ragged. I remember what May had said about her parents. Could these be the ones that did the deed? Were things so bad out there hunting children was a valid preoccupation? Maybe it was the bag she was dragging around. I can’t imagine what food is worth.

Ok…so no time for my original plan. I have to save May. Which means I either let her in now or head out there and kill them both. It’s a good thing I’ve been taking care of my pistol.

Getting shot fucking sucks. I’ve got a bruise the size and color of Idaho on my side, and it feels like a rib is cracked. If I hadn’t had the vest, I’d have been dead. Oleg said he’s going to the Navy Base to see who those guys were, but I can’t come. Screw that, there’s a great story here, and I’m going. I just have to convince them of this.

Theories are abundant about the events of yesterday, and so are the issues. The guys were definitely violent, and according to Oleg and the rest of the crew, new to the area. This leads to the first question. There were a number of people living in that neighborhood. Were they still there, killed, or did they move on after being pushed out? Any of these are possible. If they stayed, they probably had to pay some form of protection, probably had to give up quite a bit of what they had built up in terms of food and energy resources. That’s not a good thing for anyone to do. If they had left, Oleg thinks they would have passed by to warn the project. They were friendly with the community, and had reached out to them time and again. Leaving without a warning seemed out of character for that relationship. That left them dead, an option Oleg didn’t want to consider. There were five families in that neighborhood. Nobody would come in and just kill that many people, how could they?

Next issue was how far did the territory of this new group reach? The roads we would take to the Naval yards skirted that neighborhood, what if they sat on that road waiting to ambush travelers? Should we go further south around, or would that waste too much gas?

They would also have to work towards fortifying more now than on other projects which could extend the life support efforts. Less focus on the power network, less focus on the computers. More need for metal. Metal is heavy, hard to bring back to the facility. Needs more power, which means more focus on the biodiesel production. More scavenging, more exposure.

So they began planning the trip. And this is where I insisted I come.

“No.” Their reply. “You can barely hold yourself upright.”

I was laying down, I had to admit. I tried to sit up, and it was a slow and laborious process, but I got there, dammit.

“I’m going.”

“No. You aren’t well enough, and its up to us to risk ourselves. You’re our guest.”

“I’m a reporter, and I need to get the full story. I’ll be fine tomorrow.”

“You could have cracked ribs.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“She’ll be hard to move in an attack. We can’t do it.”

“I’m the only one here with survival training. You guys are just reading it from a book you found in the library.”

“We can’t.”

I’m summarizing a bit. There was more to the discussions, but when I got that out of them, well, their reply didn’t start with a no, so I must have been wearing them down.

“I’ve broken ribs and been training again in three days. They taught me how to deal with the pain. This is nothing.”

They looked around the room at each other.

“We’re going to have to build up our defenses, both here and on the vehicles before we go.”

“Two days. We’ll see how you are, Lori.”

So I’m going. No way I’m not. Time to help them prepare.

10/05/2012

There were gunshots in the streets last night. We had planned a scavenger run, but now it’s going to be incident investigation as well. Oleg is especially concerned. He has friends in the neighborhoods we heard the shots in. He offered to let me stay home, but I wasn’t afraid to take the trip. We suited up, bulletproof vests, shotguns and handguns. Guns were never exactly scarce in the States, but bullets were a precious resource. There may have been millions in stockpiles in various places, but those places were raided early on, and they aren’t making any more. It looked like Oleg’s gear was mostly police issued. I wondered how he got his hands on that, but it wasn’t time to ask. It was time to go out.

The vehicle we took was a diesel Mercedes Monica had modified to run biodiesel. The doors had been removed, as had the windshield and the roof. She’d plated the tires with some extra metal on the outside, and one bullet hole testified as to why. When I got here, Oleg said there were rough areas around here.

We headed south along a main road and then turned east into a residential area. It looked like a nice neighborhood once. Now, most of the homes showed significant damage and decay. Many windows were broken, some collapsed porches, and some were kept up. Our first stop was at one of these.

Monica stopped the car in the middle of the road, and we got out, keeping a close eye on all directions. Oleg alone went to the door. He knocked and waited. Then he called in, and nothing came back.

“Back in the car.”

We piled in, and Monica started moving again.

“Well, maybe they’re out.”

We wound our way further into the enclave, looks like the area was all one large development with about a dozen styles of homes. The winding streets felt like they must have been peaceful once.

“This area,” Oleg told me, “Used to support the college, the naval bases and industry further east, very professional.”

We came to another clean house. Again, the SWAT routine. Again, he knocked, and no one was home. Then a shot hit me. I flew forward a little bit, tripped on my feet and landed face forward in the street. Bastards shot me in the back. Where the fuck were they? Oleg picked me up fast and we rushed back to the car, but by the time we were seated, there were gunmen in front of and behind us. A leader stepped forward.

“We control this neighborhood now.”

“Who are you?” Oleg said. We all had guns drawn. Not a winnable situation.

“You’ll see. Now get the fuck out.”

The leader nodded and they opened up behind us.

We got to a safer spot, at least there was no place to hide, and they stopped and turned to me.

“Are you ok?”

“Yeah, a little freaked, but yeah.”

“Turn around, let’s see your back.”

I did. The bullet didn’t get through. It was a pretty small caliber. They had bigger weapons, it was a warning shot, but I thought those were usually fired into the air.

For now, they’re making me rest. I’ll be able to relate the discussions Oleg had with the rest of them later.

It’s been four days. Four days and the girl keeps coming back. Matted blonde hair tied back into pigtails. Wearing tattered clothes stitched together with fishing line and shoelaces. She can’t be older than eight or nine.

She just stands or sits in front of the front hatch camera. Sometimes she waves. Does she know I’m here? She’s dirty but not starved. She is skinny, very skinny, but not on the verge of death. How can she be out there?

After the plague? After everything that’s gone on out there? How could she be alive without any protective gear? How can she even EXIST?

She has to be a hallucination. I’ve already started hearing things. This has got to be the seclusion and depression setting in. There’s just no way she’s real. She can’t be real.

Can she?

She moves closer to the door and I bolt upright. I can’t see her anyway. She’s too small for the camera that close to the hatch door. I almost get up and run to the front door. I just want to see her for real.

The intercom buzzes with her little voice, “Hello?”

It’s distorted and cracked but it’s her. Or is it? I just can’t tell. Is this just more madness seeping forth? My hands are trembling as they reach for the button. I know I shouldn’t say anything. If she’s just a delusion I can’t give into it, no matter how tempting.

But what if she IS real? I can’t just let her rot out there.

I can barely manage a whisper, “H-hi there.”

She leaps back from my response and stares at the camera in surprise and fear. Then she smiles. A little girl smile. She claps her hands together excitedly and runs off.

“Wait! Don’t go! Don’t…” I shout into the intercom. But she’s already gone. I can’t spot her on any of the other cameras. I sit back and sigh, running my hand down my face. Should I go out after her? I have a chemical suit and as long as I cycle the airlock coming and going I should be fine.

Shit. If she’s a carrier I can’t just BRING her in here. Could she be immune? I certainly don’t know how to test for it or treat it. I can clean a bullet wound well enough, sure. But blood work and medicine and all that crap? Shit.

She can’t be here alone. There’s just no way. If she brings her family back they’ll ALL want in. I can’t just throw them some food like they were ducks and tell them to go.

Although it’s not like they can force their way in. I’m not sure if I could stand by and watch people starve to death on my front porch. I never liked killing people. It’s why I preferred to work with machines. Make the guns work so someone else can fire them.

It’s a couple hours before she’s back. She’s dragging a bag with her. It’s a big duffel bag. It looks like it takes all her strength just to move it. No wonder it took her so long to return. She plops it down by the front hatch where its dry.

The way the front hatch is built there’s a long overhang and a lip at the end on the top and bottom. It works great for backing trucks in. Throw up an air-tight seal and you’re good to go for transporting goods or passengers. She starts pulling stuff out of the bag.

Blankets and some food. I use the term “food” loosely. Canned stuff and maybe some dried meat. I don’t want to know what kind of meat it is. It looks like she has a tent too, but she doesn’t bother trying to set it up.

She hops over to the intercom and says, “Hi again. My name is May. Can I stay here?”

I nearly fall out of my chair grabbing at the microphone, “Yeah, yeah! That’s cool. Go ahead.”

She responds through the electric crackle, “What’s your name?”

“Uh, Jack. My name’s Jack,” I say, trying to remember how to talk to another living being. “What are you doing all alone, May? Where’s your mom or dad?”

She’s quick to respond and I find it a little disturbing, “They’re dead.”

I don’t know why I asked that. The answer was pretty obvious. Lousy conversation starter. She steps away from the intercom and sits in her pile of dirty blankets. After a moment of thought she pulls a piece of jerky out and starts to chew on it.

I really hope that’s animal jerky.

She pulls what looks like a water damaged story book out of her pack and flips through the pages. Then she sighs and puts it down. Even from the camera feed I can tell it’s beyond readable. May hops up and goes to the intercom.

“Mr. Jack? I’m getting sleepy, can you read me a story?” she asks, as innocent as a sunrise. “My Papa used to when I couldn’t sleep.”

I’m not sure if she was starting to cry, but I know I was having a hard time not losing it. Fuck. I want to let her in so badly. She doesn’t deserve this. If anyone should be safe in here it’s May. But if I open that door and let her in it could kill me.

I hit the button and speak into the intercom, “Yeah, May. I can tell you a story.”

God help me.

Tidewater Community College – Oleg woke me early today to get a look at some of the power generation efforts of the compound. We started with the sun, with the solar arrays. On the upper floors of the south end of the building, they had lined up just about any kind of solar panel they could find. When I asked where they had come from, they had a long list of places. The largest source had been traffic and construction lots, where solar panels powered road signs and came with large batteries. They had wheeled over two hundred of these here from a few different yards, and were still bringing some in as they found them. They dedicated almost half of their scavenging runs to getting these solar panels and batteries. The panels and batteries became an array, and it had supplied enough power for the compound before the computers came on line. In a unique use of recycling, they reused the lights in the compound and the chassis were modified in the shop into a pair of spikes which were positioned around the border fence to discourage trespass or vehicular breaches of the fence.

This wasn’t the only source of solar panels. They took some from houses, some from public sites, I think they even had a number of solar panels from calculators wired up. When I saw some of these small ones Oleg simply smiled.
“Every little bit helps.”

We then went into the bowels of the buildings. There I met Pawel Raczick, an Eastern European engineer who was in the States on a temporary visa when things happened and he was stuck. He was working on a diesel generator which had been on the property, had converted it to biodiesel production. The generator was not running during the day with the amount of power the solar panels were providing. They tried to run it only overnight, to keep their computer links active. I was actually talking to a significant percentage of the people in the world who had an email address right here.

Pawel took us up to a greenhouse of sorts he had created in the central atrium of one of the buildings. Here, he had constructed many frames which held curtains of sheet plastic tubes filled with water, an algae farm. From these, and several other sites he had on the location, he harvested algae and made biodiesel fuel from them.
Pawel was a small man, humble, with graying straggly hair and a bent pair of glasses. Everywhere he went, the smell of a workshop followed, the smell of lubricants and oil.

We met then for lunch, the biggest meal of the day for all of them, and over lunch they talked about progress and problems, a free exchange of knowledge all in the drive for a better and stronger community. They also spoke about capacity, something on everybody’s mind, and if they could bring in anybody else from the surrounding area and sustain their needs with food and power production. They talked about digging up one of the parking lots to make a field for planting, but they weren’t sure if there was enough fuel for the machines to do it, and how fertile the ground would be afterwards. Intelligent sustainability was the most common thread of the meal, and I began to understand, every meal.

The Tidewater Recovery Project, as Oleg calls it, is staffed full time by about 20 people, but there are many more in the community it serves who offer physical support, be it in the form of food and material contributions or physical labor.

Oleg first took me to the machine shop, a combination of the machine and automotive shops from when the facility was an active college. Technical education was a mainstay of the junior college system for years, and this place was equipped. Computer control, new quality machines are everywhere, with enough supplies to build just about anything from scratch.

The head of the machine shop is Monica Ruiz, a younger woman with a thick Spanish accent and a lot of attitude. She had the wheel off of a small car and the brakes completely disassembled on the ground in front of her. She wore the dirtiest shirt you could imagine, the grease from the work she does evidently doesn’t wash out if you don’t have serious detergent.

“Bug’s almost ready.”

“Bug?” I asked.

“Old VW. Love them. There were millions of them out there, almost all with the same parts, fricking go-carts with doors. A little suspension tweak and they can actually handle the streets like an SUV without the shitty gas mileage.”

She showed me around some. She had three vehicles in the shop, an SUV that she had crudely armored, a motorcycle, actually a big road bike leaned on a kickstand, and a couple more sedans which looked in fair, unmodified condition were parked inside the space. One was parked on the lift, ready to be worked on. She also had a number of odd metallic things, almost looked like modern sculptures.

“Wind turbines. This design doesn’t get as affected by strong winds, not like a big windmill. We’ll line the roof with them, and hand enough power to supply our operation,” Oleg explained. “How are we doing on that project?”

“Get me some more alternators, and metal, I’ll get them done.”

“Our computer operations are nearing our power generation, and we’re only about a quarter up and running,” Oleg explained.

A solar array, broken by some traumatic event, sat in one corner.

“What about the array?”

“Soon as I finish the car, boss.”

“Was it damaged by the hurricane?” I asked.

“No. Marauders. Any new weapons?”

“I’m not a miracle worker. I’ve got some ideas, though. ”

Oleg nodded, and lingered for a minute before leading me out without saying much else. When we got into the hall, I had to stop him.

“Marauders?”

“We were perfectly prepared for the storm, but they struck as we were pulling things back out. I told you there were some rough spots out here.”

“Who are they?”

“We don’t know. We have fought them off pretty well up to this point, and they don’t seem to be interested in anything specifically. They’re just out causing trouble.”

There’s quite a bit more here to see, and far more than I can report in a day. More tomorrow or so.

It stinks in here. It smells like sweat and coffee filters. I can’t remember when I last had coffee. A week ago? A month? Year? Time is relative. Locked away in this bunker time is an illusion. The lights are white and cold, like candles wrapped in ice. They always remind me of hospital lights. They’re meant to last as long as necessary but I always feel like I’m headed for surgery.

Before the world died I laughed at my wife for wanting to get some Feng Shui weirdo in to redecorate the apartment. Now I wonder what could have been done to improve this room. Maybe if my cot was moved closer to the door or faced a different direction I’d wake up refreshed for once.

The boxes of provisions certainly do nothing for the room. On top of the box I use as a dinner table is my little house made of protein bars. Before I was told to get my sorry ass to this bunker.

“Prep the generators and get everything running. You’ll be living in with a number of VIPs,” they had said. VIPs. Because that’s all I needed to know.

At least I have my job: military engineer. Assigned to this shit-hole town in the middle of a marsh in Illinois. I’ve been sitting in this steel and cement sanctuary for God knows how long.

The VIPs never made it. It’s just me and enough food to last the apocalypse. I haul myself off the cot and wander to my protein bar house. I lash out and knock it to pieces before grabbing one of those that fell and tearing it open. Breakfast of champions.

I start my rounds by checking the generator. The solar panels seem to be taking in enough, I don’t need to start using gas yet. Although, a quick run on the bike could provide a little supplemental energy. A few tweaks here or there, mostly to keep myself busy.

That could use a bit of tightening.

I’ve got plenty of spares for when that eventually wears out.

Well, next is the-

“Jackie?” a voice calls from the hall.

I stand up and wait. That was a familiar voice. I know there is no one here. I move from the machines and peer down the cold steel and cement hallway. I can see the three bedrooms, one of which I’ve taken for myself, but nothing else. The store rooms are farther down near the main hatch and the lab is the other way past the utilities room.

The rear hatch is in here, and I know there’s no one with me.

I sigh, “So I’m finally going crazy.”

The idea of talking to some imaginary person really wasn’t that bad an idea. At least I’d have company.

Next is the air pump. It’s manual, but easy to get working. I get the air circulating again in short order. Plumbing seems fine and I’ve got plenty of water for now. This place was built to house at least two families of four and myself. I’m not too concerned about running out of supplies.

My daily tasks taken care of I take a seat at what I assume was supposed to be the lab. The surface monitoring equipment is in here, though. Nothing at the front hatch. The rear hatch camera has been dead for a while now, a little disconcerting since it’s supposed to be hidden. I’ve thought about going out to see if I could fix it, but with the plague drifting around like a microscopic reaper I’m not risking it.

Nature cam one: Nothing but scraggly nasty trees.

Nature cam two: Some bushes and wet soggy earth.

Nature came three: More swamp.

I watch the cameras. Not sure what I’m hoping for. The rescue party? Big Papa Government showing up with a big smile and a magic fix? Maybe the VIPs I’m supposed to be looking after are still out there, looking for this promised haven.

I start drifting off to sleep. There is a soft hand on my shoulder and my wife’s voice whispers in my ear, “Look, Jackie. Look.”

I mumble her name and glance at the monitor. There’s a young woman staring straight at the camera.

Outside.