by Matthew Feeney, Moose Lake, Minnesota
The man was jolted out of his fitful slumber by an unfamiliar noise. He lay silently in his bed, letting awareness slowly soared back into his head. He listened again for the sound. The constant hum and whirl from the ventilation grills was all he heard. It was all he heard in the last 68 days (give or take a day or two).
Not that he was complaining. As long as he heard that familiar hum from the vent, he knew he still had a fighting chance of survival. Whatever the sound was real or dream induced that had awakened him didn’t recur. Since he was probably the sole human survivor within several hundred miles, he ascribed the phantom sound to a dream.
He stretched and yawned, rolling his shoulders a few times before sitting up in his bunk and surveying his bomb shelter. Not that he knew for sure it had been a bomb but “survival shelter” (Or worse yet, bunker) sounded so paranoid to most people’s ears. But then again, they were all dead and here he was safe and sound. Who’s laughin’ now?
His forty-five years old lumberjack physique rose into a sitting position, feet resting comfortably on the concrete floor for a brief moment before taking his full weight as he stretched and stood up. He smiled as he beheld his kingdom, a simple one-room shelter he had built himself. He had looked into many different shelter types: the modular pods which were concrete balls connected by concrete sewer pipe tunnels, as well as the self-contained survival units built into metal shipping containers, most of them furnished and decorated nicer than his house, and all of them priced well above his budget.
He had spent hundreds of hours researching and scouring the internet for ideas and had incorporated a few of the more creative ones into his own home-made design. Take his window for example. Typical 3×4 double-hung window complete with matching curtains and looking at the same never changing scene of a weather worn barn surrounded on two sides by rows of corn at least five-feet high.
The sun shone brightly, shadows indicating it was nearly early evening. The man watched closely for several moments but everything was still not a breath of wind to ruin the illusion of a window, for it really was a window, or at least the inner half of a window frame mounted on the cinderblock wall like work of art.
The full color photograph of the barn in a cornfield was back-lit to be bright enough to be seen through the screen and framed by drapes. It certainly gave the illusion of reality. Except for the fact that nothing ever moved and nothing ever changed. It was no different from a real window, and once in a while the air blowing from the ventilation grill even caused the curtains to flutter slightly adding to the illusion. Looked like it would be another beautiful day out!
He wished he knew exactly what sort of day it really was out there. He didn’t know if it was from the EMP pulse or subsequent fireball, but every single piece of electronic gadgetry and gauges he had were shot and had been since day one. He was as good as blind down here, twenty feet of earth above him protecting him from the residual radiation that was supposedly nonexistent. As long as his air ventilation system was working, he didn’t care so much about his electronic toys, though it would be nice to listen to some Country Western music on his MP3 players or play some games on his bricked laptop. He preferred the simple ones like Minesweeper and Spider Solitaire. He was living in a huge game of solitaire right now.
He took two steps and arrived at his mini-loo, a stainless steel computing toilet and made his daily deposits. As he finished up the paperwork, his thoughts ran to how much water was remaining in his buried water tank. He washed his hands and guessed he probably had only used 1/4th of the water in the six-hundred gallon tank, but that was only a guess since the water gauges he had opted for were fancy electronic ones and totally useless.
The water was always delivered at a constant fifty-seven degrees that would have made for a cold shower. The good news is he didn’t design a shower into his shelter. His bird-baths helped to stretch his water reserve far beyond his original calculations.
He sauntered over to the shelter’s only door, ritually placing both hands palm-first on the tired gray steel and trying to gauge whether or not there was still a firestorm raging above. But this was a six inch steel door with vault locks, designed to withstand blast pressures from bomb explosions as well as bullets from hungry marauders… so there was no guarantee the cool metal of the interior matched the exterior temperature.
Why hadn’t he used some simple meat thermometer built through the concrete wall instead of relying on those fancy electronic thermostats? Oh, to even have a simple periscope around just to see what was left of the real world. Of course, it’s possible the destruction above wasn’t that extensive. He chose this five-acre piece of property because of the relative seclusion and protection offered by the rolling hills and nearby river.
He grabbed his breakfast tray and reviewed today’s breakfast menu: 1 cup hot cereal, 6 fluid ounce of turkey sausage gravy, 2 rehydrated biscuits, 1 jelly packet “grape,” 2 sugar substitutes and 1 packet of instant coffee that doesn’t dissolve all the way when you only have ground temperature water. He had a propane stove, of course, but to save fuel he preferred not to use it for breakfast. He dug into his meal, glad he hadn’t fallen for the MRE solution for his meals. But what was he going to do when his food ran out? Would it be safe to go topside by then? Believing the ostrich didn’t have a trademark on a good life philosophy, the man adamantly refused to check his food supply. Ignorance was bliss, or as much bliss one can have with a sporkful of room temperature turkey gravy in their mouth.
The man gazed around his domain that had kept him safe and secure and alive for ten long weeks. He had opted for the fourteen foot ceilings instead of the usual twelves, the extra two rows of cinderblocks really helped open it up and provided the illusion of more of a spade. Otherwise he had opted for the smaller footprint and used built-in triple bunks, another advantage of the extra two rows of heights.
Looking back on it now, he realized that even if he had found someone worth saving additional people in this cramped space would have driven everyone crazy, long before they had to worry about running out of food or water. Wouldn’t that be ironic? Survive the great Armageddon and then end up killing each other in a case of cabin fever. Fever made him thinking of his medical stockpile and worry about what he might find outside his door.
The man’s mind drifted back to the comforting soul of the ventilation system that told him he was alive now and for at least the next twenty hours. Now, if there had been people in here, the volume of air in the room would have only lasted a few hours. But he was alone, so all the oxygen was his.
He had camouflage and hardened the air intake valve, the snorkel to topside that kept him alive. If the end had come as a biblical flooding, the last place you would want to be was twenty feet underground with a big snorkel ready to turn your habitat into a buried aquarium. To survive a flood you needed an ark or a houseboat. And don’t forget about a desalination machine, even in the Midwest, any flood waters would become saltwater, or at least contain enough salt and chemicals to make the water non-portable for humans.
What if he was the only humanbeing left on the planet? Adam without Eve. Not that he would want an Eve, since puberty he knew he had preferred Steve, but if he had to do it to save the human race he was willing to do whatever it would take. He would take one for the team. Hopefully there would be a celebratory six-pack to mark this lifetime achievement, preferably consumed before the act.
He smiled wryly and let his mind continue to wander. Maybe today was the day he was to come out. God sent Moses a sign, rainbows and doves bearing gifts. Was some talking mole supposed to come knocking on his shelter door to let him know all was clear?
“Nothing to fear!” Would the mole talk in a high-pitched squeaky voice? He pondered a moment before deciding it would probably be a low, gravelly voice. Thinking further he realized he had never actually seen a mole in real life- probably on TV or a in book, but he’d be hard pressed to draw one.
Regardless of what it looked like, if the damn thing talked to him, that would be a very clear sign. Sometimes in the quiet he thought he heard voices and several times a day the steady throb of the ventilation fan morphed into honest to God music. He knew it was in his head, but he would still listen and tap his fingers and feet to the rhythms. Sometimes it was country other times ‘80’s hair rock band, never any commercials. He wished something was playing now.
Sitting on the edge of his bunk, he leaned forward to place his now empty tray on the kitchen counter. He looked over his small work table and saw the five books he was reading. All paperbacks and all well-read many times over. His iPad, of course, contained several hundred eBooks, alone with survival manuals and instruction guides and scanned “how-to” pamphlets. But with all the electronics down, due to the EMP, he was reduced to re-reading the same five books over and over. Maybe he should write a book, maybe even about his experiences surviving in the bunker. The idea brought a spark of hope to his eyes until reality hit him between the eyes, who would be around to read it? The Last Memoirs of the Last Man on Earth from Adam to Lloyd. Eh. Didn’t really roll off the tongue. Maybe he’d start tomorrow. If he was still alive.
Unconsciously he glanced at the ventilation screen. No music, but still fresh air. Amazing how an inconspicuous 6×3 inch shielded grate could become so important in someone’s life. An average house had them in every room, but he had never noticed them before this experience. Surprised how something so common and mundane could take on such deep meaning and significance. He listened for a while, until his brain flipped from ventilation to what his future would be like outside the bunker. There had to be a life outside the cube. He had to go out eventually. He could always come back if he was still alive.
He grabbed a Stephen King book and flopped back onto his unmade bunk, stretching with both arms above his head. He smelled ripe. He couldn’t remember his last bird bath. The days blurred together. Not to mention he had no one to impress. He extended one arm over his head, open the book to a random spot and started to read.
Suddenly there was a knock and the mole’s voice called out, “Mr. Freeman? You ready?” He was startled for a moment, and then he remembered. He had asked God for a sign when it was safe to go out into the world, this was obviously his sign! He sat up, placing his opened book face-down on the bunk and smiled. It was time to go forth. To enter this new world to face new challenges, to survive.
Suddenly his handle-less airlock door was being opened from the outside. The bolts slammed back and the heavy steel door he had stood at and touched so many times was slowly being cracked open. He wasn’t sure what was coming next, but a small trickle of a deeply repressed memory seemed to squiggle upwards from the deep depths of his mind. The man remained seated, staring transfixed as the open space around the door grew.
Finally the kind face of an officer popped through the door jamb. “I see you’re all done with breakfast. Grab your linens, we’re packing ya’ out of here! You’re heading to Unit 10!”
The seated man remained silent but mechanically nodded as he put a tired smile on his face. He slowly stood up and turned around to bunch his sheets and blankets into a messy bundle. There was only a single bunk. The soul survivor stepped towards freedom, and then hesitated. He slowly turned around to survey what had been his bunker for the last sixty-eight days. His window had bars instead of curtains, and the view was that of razor wire and the backside of the prison’s medical unit topped by more sparkling razor wire. The picture had never changed, but now he saw the real sun left striped shadows on the cell floor for him to step over as he shuffled slowly towards the door, about to return to the world of General Population.