by Greg Dragon
Another alarm went off within the bunker and a voice came over the loudspeaker, asking all of the citizens to return to their rooms and put on their masks. Each room had a panic kit in case of the worst and the doors held seals to stop fumes from getting inside. Alysia saw that her father wasn’t budging, but instead pulled out a mask and placed it on his face. She thought long and hard what to do next and then she saw Debdan run inside and lock his door while Jaime walked past her towards the soldiers.
“Jaime, what the hell are you doing?” Alysia asked and he waved her off.
“I’d rather die in a fight than be sealed inside some can like a sardine,” he said. The words resonated with her and she walked behind him along with a number of other men and women who wanted to stand with the soldiers.
Alysia expected her father to object when he saw her there but he looked as if he wanted her to be there. Tracy was standing very close to him and she wondered when the two of them had gotten to be so close.
“Now listen up,” a soldier shouted as he walked out in front of them all. “If you aren’t here to volunteer, get your ass back to your room and lock yourself in. Final warning. If you are here to help, I would ask that you step to the rear if you have no experience with guns. You will get the most important job … we need you to flank us and seal the exit, should we get overrun. For those of you who can shoot, you are here to shoot the monsters, not each other. I will personally put down anybody who volunteers to pick up a weapon and poses a threat to this group. Do you understand me?”
The people agreed in concert but the thought of it made Alysia a little nervous.
“We will move out on my command to clear the entrance. Once we’re out, you volunteers can follow and take care of anything trying to come at us from the back. Do you understand me?”
They answered affirmatively and he was satisfied. “Now the trunks at your feet have the anti-radiation gear you’re going to need to survive outside. You only get one each, so make sure it fits, that it’s secure, and that you are tight and ready for when that door opens.”
Alysia took the mask and suit a soldier handed her and retrieved her gun from the case. She pulled on the suit and it made a sucking sound, pulling itself tightly around her limbs and then puffing back out just a tad to where it felt comfortable. She tried on some boots that were in the box and when she found her size, she added gloves and then walked over to her father to check if she was ready.
He looked her over, adjusted a few straps, and then gave her the thumbs up when he was satisfied.
“It’s cool seeing you two together after all this time,” Tracy said, smiling with her mask in her hands and watching them intently. Alysia looked up and smiled at her, but James didn’t seem to hear her. The mask and black suit made him look like a bug-eyed ninja, but he was armed to the teeth with guns and ammunition. Alysia followed his lead and grabbed a few more items, strapping a knife to her leg as a final touch.
“What you need that for?” Jaime asked, pointing to the stick she had strapped to her back. “You plan to pole vault out of here when it’s done?”
“Just watch and learn, young tadpole. I’m pretty good with a staff, aren’t I, Dad?” She looked up at her father for affirmation.
James Knight nodded and touched her shoulder. “You stay at my hip no matter what happens, okay, baby girl?”
“THREE SECONDS!” the lead soldier yelled and they all hastened with their preparation.
Alysia hated when he called her “baby girl” but she knew how he meant it and it almost broke her heart. “I won’t leave you, Dad, I promise,” she said. “It will be like the old days when we sparred.”
“Stay close, and stay awake. This is the real thing,” he said but as soon as he did, the lid was pulled open and a horde of demons rushed down the stairs and got peppered to death by the soldiers’ machine gun fire. They moved up the stairs while everyone followed, and as they fought their way to the outside, the non-combatants closed the door behind the volunteers and sealed it shut.
Outside the rain was pouring down, and the glass on Alysia’s mask adjusted itself to clear up the mist and residue that threatened to blind her in the atmosphere.
“What does that mean?” Alysia asked, pointing at the locked door behind them.
Tracy turned and shrugged her shoulders. “It means that we are now the guardians of the bunker. I’m guessing this was a suicide mission that no one bothered to tell us, huh, James?”
“Every mission is a suicide mission, but if you’re going to go out, this is how you do it,” he said and brought up the pulse rifle to drop a flying creature, then spun it around to put a few more rounds into the swarming horde of demons.
“I’ve never seen them this desperate!” Jaime yelled as he fired shot after shot from his pistols.
“They’re after me,” Alysia said, and a number of people turned to look at her to see if she was joking. They couldn’t tell through the mask, but from her voice, James knew she was being sincere.
“What are you talking about, Alysia?” he said as he turned around to face her.
“I mean throughout the time you’ve been searching for me, Dad. They’ve been trying to capture me for some sort of ritual.”
James couldn’t believe it. The story just didn’t make any sense. Why Alysia, why now? Why would it be his daughter out of a country of millions that the demons wanted to capture?
They continued to fight but a few men went down and Alysia began to feel guilty for people dying on her behalf. Maybe it would be better to let them have her; then they might go away and the country could get back to normal once that happened.
She thought of the first day, wanting to see Tavi and how the calls to evacuate did not reach her school. She couldn’t go anywhere without them finding her, and so many people had died trying to keep her safe. She was only one person and she could save millions, yet here she was amidst brave people, fighting back. Wouldn’t martyring myself for the greater good be the right thing to do?
She thought about the stories her father would tell her, how soldiers were trained to give themselves up to protect their brothers. She loved life, she had so much left to do, but what sort of future would there be if she was always running, and people were dying for her? She looked over at Jaime, who was past guessing at her odd words and was firing into the crowd with his two pistols. Tracy was next to him, like a warrior queen from the books she had grown up reading. Then there was her father, who was now in the front, taking charge, pointing out targets, keeping them all alive.
It felt like time slowed as she thought about what to do: to choose life and stay in hell, or choose death and save everyone. What would James Knight do? But as soon as she asked herself this, she broke into a sprint and ran back past the entrance of the bunker to the area where the old concrete barracks lay vacant. Time moved slowly in her mind as she sprinted, and the demons surged towards her. Some kreples broke past them to get at her, but she was fast, too fast, even for them.
James and Tracy saw what happened and were after her in an instant, shooting what they could and screaming her name in unison. She was almost to the barracks when the wounded giant from before knelt right in front of her, appearing as if from nowhere.
She tried to stop to avoid him but slid and fell on her face. His wounds were grave and a puddle of blood splashed near where she lay. It was the end of the line, and as he reached for her she shot at his hand to stop him. It didn’t work and she was lifted airborne despite her attempts to claw her way out. She felt the pressure as he squeezed her slightly and she kicked her legs and punched at his hand to let her go.
James and Tracy shot at the giant but he ignored them as if their shots had no effect. It was like Alysia was a magnet he just couldn’t resist. James shouldered his rifle and then ran to the giant’s feet while pulling out his knife. Tracy kept the demons off of him with her automatic rifle, and as the soldiers caught up with her to help, the giant shifted and tried to step on them. James move
d quickly and cut where his Achilles tendon would be. The beast bellowed in pain as he dropped Alysia to reach back and clutch at his damaged foot. The injury was severe and as he shifted to touch it, it tore open into a bloody gash and he groaned loudly and toppled to the ground in pain.
The earth shook from the giant’s impact, but Tracy ran up and slid gracefully to catch the falling Alysia. As she did this a number of aircraft flew by, pumping even more bullets into the body of the giant. James rallied the people to him and together they ran back to the barracks where they could get out of the rain.
“No use in staying out there when the threat to the bunker is dead and bleeding out,” he said.
The soldiers lined up by the windows to pick off any demons that got close, and Tracy laid Alysia on a bench and checked her body for any wounds.
“How you doing, kid?” Tracy asked.
“Why did you guys follow me? I was leading them away. They are after me, remember? They—”
“Stop it, CeeCee!” her father shouted from across the room. He walked up to her with a look of anger flushed across his face. “They aren’t after you, they are after girls like you. I need you to bring it in and stop acting like this is all about you. Many of us are out here to protect the ones we love down there.” He jabbed his finger downwards to indicate the bunker where thousands of families were locked in their rooms, praying that the monsters wouldn’t break through. “I have the luxury of having the one I love up here, and I don’t appreciate you trying to kill yourself on my watch. What were you thinking?”
Alysia shook her head, not knowing how to shake the shame she felt at her actions. “I just … I just thought that I could lead them away so everybody could be okay. I thought they were after me. Why else would they keep me alive after capturing me twice?”
Tracy stood up and nodded at James, indicating that she hadn’t found anything off about Alysia’s gear. She helped the girl to her feet, and then handed her a rifle and touched her on the butt. “Give her a break, Jimmy, her intentions were good.”
When she said this, it took all of James Knight’s patience to not lash out at Tracy for stepping in on their family disagreement, but he simply turned away and rejoined the soldiers who were shooting out at the demons trying to reach the bunker.
Alysia did the same thing and walked over to a window to shoot. Jaime took up a position next to her.
“You okay, CeeCee?” he asked. She looked at him to see if he was mocking her but he seemed to be sincere.
“Yeah, it’s just a little too surreal for me right now. I keep trying to fight and do what I assume is right, and it keeps on ending up with me hurt or captured somehow. I don’t know why you guys stay with me. I’m nothing but trouble, apparently, and I can’t get out of my own way.”
“You know, it’s not so hard to see why people stay with you, Alysia. You’re human, you’re allowed to mess up. Does your dad demand perfection from you or something? Were you one of those kids, nothing less than an A or you get shamed?”
“Nothing like that,” Alysia said, and then tried to aim down the sights to shoot at a kreple that was tugging at the bunker’s handle. She squeezed the trigger, which was too tight for her untrained finger, but the shot flew true and the creature’s head exploded.
“Nice shot!” Jaime exclaimed, and a man standing next to her reached over, touched her shoulder, and gave her a nod of approval. I can do this, Alysia thought, and decided she would not make any more rash calls when other people’s lives were involved. She looked over to see if her father had seen her make the shot, but he was behind his pulse rifle, focused on the objective and dropping the demons one after another.
“My dad didn’t demand straight A’s. He made me understand their importance so that I could hold myself to that standard,” she said. “When I had a low grade, I beat myself up more than my parents did. My problem is that I strive to be perfect, it doesn’t have anything to do with anybody but myself.”
Jaime didn’t say anything more, but he knew that she was okay by the way she responded. He wondered how long they would have to hold the bunker until the patrolling soldiers returned. They had been out there an hour, and the excitement with Alysia had sent his heart beating faster than he had ever felt it beat before. He had wanted to vomit but the suit and mask prevented it from being a real solution. He was glad they’d run into the barracks as it had given him a chance to catch his breath.
“Any word from the front?” a large man asked.
A soldier with a radio attached to his suit shook his head. “Negative. There must be a lot of those damn things on the perimeter. When I hear something you will know.”
So they kept on fighting, Alysia trying to forget her poor decision to run, and the others trying to keep the bunker clear.
~ * ~ * ~
While the fight on the outside was going on, Debdan was inside of his bunker home watching the television intently as a live broadcast showed the Air Force dropping bombs and fighting back against the monsters. The outlook seemed grim as the monsters appeared endless, and there were many pilots losing their lives to the flying creatures.
He thought about Jaime and Alysia and whether or not they were outside fighting. He wanted them to be okay, but deep down he assumed they were dead and the entrance to the bunker was overloaded with demons trying to gain access. They were not allowed to have guns inside of the bunker and this more than anything else made him feel uneasy. What was to become of them if the monsters broke through?
He slipped on a hooded sweatshirt and stepped outside, despite the soldier’s orders to stay in their rooms. The entire underground bunker city was a ghost town, and there was one armed guard walking around. Debdan hid and waited for him to pass the cul-de-sac, then walked towards the entrance, making sure to stay to the rear of the buildings as he did so. When he got to the front where the weapons cache was, he noticed there was a guard standing next to it.
“Come out with your hands up. You know you aren’t supposed to be out here,” the guard announced. He brought up his rifle to point it at Debdan, who hadn’t realized that he wasn’t as well hidden as he thought.
“Sorry, sir, I was just coming to see if my friends—”
“Nice try. If you weren’t full of it, you would have walked up here like a normal person instead of sneaking around all loud like you did. Yeah, I’ve been watching you. You’re too big to be trying to act stealthy, bro. Now look, we can’t have you out here so go back home or I’ll throw you in a cell.”
Debdan didn’t have to be told twice. He took off running back to his room and locked the door quickly before cursing himself for being caught. Why hadn’t he gone with Jaime when they were asking for volunteers? Sure, the prospect of death on the frontlines was a looming, scary, scary, reality, but was being trapped in the dark confines of the bunker any better? He turned on the television and flipped through to another channel; this time, it was one that showed a worldwide broadcast of the situation.
The other continents were setting up military fronts on their borders, just in case the monsters decided to choose another target. The UN was sending military aid to the United States and there were carriers off the shore, sending in helicopters to collect refugees that hadn’t made it to a bunker. From an aerial standpoint the country looked like hell. It was the sort of visual that you could expect to see in movies depicting the apocalypse. In just a couple of weeks, the country was the image of fire, destruction, and war, when just a month back it had been a living, breathing example of advanced civilization.
Debdan cried when he saw this, since his parents along with extended members of his family had refused to evacuate their home. It was part of the same stubborn attitude that had made him assume Jaime was wasting his time volunteering to help the soldiers.
In a similar room about ten blocks to the south of Debdan, Angelica Morales watched the same video with tears in her eyes. She hugged her baby girl tight and stroked her curly black locks as she slept. It wasn’t w
hat had been left behind that caused Angelica to cry but what the future meant.
What would come of the survivors of the monster attack, the cities, commerce, and way of life? All of it would be pieces that they would need to reassemble as they mourned loved ones and buried the dead. She had prayed more than she had ever prayed in her life, and she wondered if this was the prediction of the book of Revelations. Was this God’s test, and would she be worthy of the rapture when it came?
She thought about her new friend, Tracy and how she had prayed for her too. She was a lonely soul of good that hadn’t been given the chance at a family yet. She wanted her to be happy; she deserved it for saving Maria and punishing the bad people who had attacked her baby. These thoughts flowed through her mind as she rocked Maria and stroked her hair, and the horror on the news footage just kept on playing out as she did this.
In every bunker home that had a person, a couple, or a large family, people went through the same emotions as Angelica and Debdan. The feeling across the board was one of hopelessness and helplessness as they were made to stay within their rooms and watch the future of their world unfold.
While this was going on, the soldiers patrolled the streets with their weapons at the ready. The bunkers were connected throughout the city and if one entrance got compromised, they would have to be ready to fight and shut off that wing. For them the feeling was a mix of anxiety with the great weight that comes with a future unknown.
Everything now relied on the soldiers, fighters, and volunteers at the entrances. Men and women like Tracy, Jaime, James and Alysia.
~ * ~ * ~
“You know, I’ve been meaning to ask,” Alysia said as she sat with Jaime on a bench in the rear of the barracks. “What do we plan to do with all those bodies once things settle down around here? The smell already makes me want to hurl, and I can only imagine that with this rain and a few days of rot … ugh! As if those demons could get any worse.”
Jaime looked over at her and then back at his gloved hands. He was tired, hungry and worn-through, but he would be the last to admit it. Their group was now taking turns at the windows, shooting at the creatures when they got close. They had decided that the first group of soldiers to the north was trapped or dead so it was up to them to protect the bunker, and they needed rest to keep going.
