This is the End 2: The Post-Apocalyptic Box Set (9 Book Collection)

by J. Thorn

  The Horde is only ten miles from the city and there has been word from the power station that the reserves are running out. We have two days at most.

  I called the General and we agreed that the walk way along the side of the tracks should be used. It's a half a mile walk and it's barely lit, but people will have to make it through if we are to get everyone out. At least it's all downhill.

  I got a message from Alice sent back up with one of the engineers that they made it through okay. That much is a relief.

  2137 September 22

  I haven't slept in thirty six hours now, but it was worth it. Finally the engineers actually managed to get the train system back this morning and I just saw the last evacuees onto the train, now it is supplies only. The last defence grid fell two hours ago.

  The General has told me that a contingent of troops will be pulling back from the front lines to form a defensive perimeter around the depot to ensure that as many supplies and evacuees make it out.

  18:00 hours

  The battle is raging outside, and it is not going well. The General briefly came inside the building just now to order me to seal the door. I can't believe that he went back outside afterwards. With some reluctance I followed my orders and I commanded the outer doors to be shut. All other supplies will be abandoned and those inside evacuated past the primary gate down the tunnel. I'm leaving this log here in case the battle goes well and the General is able to open the doors with his code-key afterwards.

  Signing out.

  That was it. That was the last entry in the log. We could only presume that he and whoever was still left here went down that tunnel and escaped along with over a million refugees. What it didn't answer was where they went to. Now Bailey was always the one for just looking for resources and stuff to scavenge, but he knew that this discovery was important to me, and he had to admit that he wanted to know what was down that tunnel as well.

  Come on. Let me show you what's left of the depot now. It's just around the front. I know, doesn't look like the kind of place to hide such a huge building, and that's because it's all underground. Mind the edge of the door as we go through, the metal door may be gone now, we re-used the steel to put some of the plating on Bailey's truck, but the edges where it tore away the walls after it fell off that first day are still sharp as anything.

  No, it's not a long way down, maybe a few hundred steps. I know it's dark, but there is light down in the depot, a spot in the roof had collapsed in the years after the evacuation and that lets enough sunlight in for you to see. You have to remember it's been a long time since all this happened. Stuff falls apart in that time.

  Mind the rubble son, it's all pretty sharp and ragged down here and your mother would curse me if I took you back injured.

  There. Take a good long look around. You weren't expecting this were you? You know when we first walked down here Bailey and me stood there for about ten minutes just gawping at the sheer size of the place. I remember him saying "Well, damn this place is pretty big." In that deep booming voice of his and it echoed. I mean echoed like nothing else.

  We cleared most of the salvage and stuff away over the years, and there was hell of a lot of it. I think those last few hundred thousand people that had to walk most of the way just dropped all kinds of junk to lighten their loads and get there quicker.

  Come on, I want to show you something down the end of the tunnel, it's quite a walk, well, about half a mile, just like the log says. Doesn't take too long and gives me time to tell you about something else we discovered whilst we were down here. Here, you take this torch. It's dark down there.

  About three days after we got here we finally cleared our way down the tunnel to about half way. A lot of junk and rubble was piled up all over the place, even things like furniture and old electrical goods. We probably could have gotten down there much sooner, but Bailey was, as ever, the scavenger and most of the stuff was of value, especially the metal stuff. You know we even found a crate of dry-sealed cakes just lying in amongst the junk. Bailey opened one of them up and took a sniff. He frowned at me, and then he just went and wolfed the whole thing down.

  "They're still fresh in the packets, Xeno," he said, with that huge grin of his, "You gotta try one of these."

  "They're still edible?"

  "Oh yeah," he said, opening another and tucking into that, "They're good, really good."

  I was amazed.

  So I did try one, and could you believe it, even though those cakes had been lying there for well over a hundred years, they were fantastic. The two of us sat in the seats of one of the abandoned trains stuffing our faces full of cake. Now, don't you ever tell you mother, because I wouldn't want to hurt her feelings, she is the best cook I have ever known and can make even the dullest and plainest of meals into something tasty, but those pre-war cakes were just amazing. They melted on your tongue.

  "You know someone would pay a good price for one of these," I said to Bailey, in between mouthfuls.

  "What?" his eyes were nearly popping out of his face. "You're joking right? You don't find things like this very often, and when you do, you enjoy them. No junk is worth this, no matter how much."

  I saved some of those cakes, and your mother still has about a dozen of them in a box out in the storage. Yes, that's right, the birthday cakes that we always give you. Though you only get one more, next year's birthday son, otherwise we will run out before your little sisters even get their share. No, I know you wouldn't want that.

  Here we are, right where we found the box of cakes, it was just dumped right over there, just where that pile of empty tin cans is. Ha, look, just there, see underneath the train? We didn't even bother to clear up the wrappers. Come on, only a few hundred yards left. We can short cut through the train and over to the other side. Mind the seats in here. Bailey stripped off all the padding on the chairs and even took up the panel flooring, so mind the jagged edges, and be careful of the holes in the floor.

  There, do you see it? Right ahead of us?

  When Bailey and me got down here there was an unpleasant surprise waiting for us. We were both standing and just staring at that massive, metal door when this damn thing tried to jump Bailey and bite him. See the booth over there? I would guess that was some kind of entrance checkpoint where everybody got signed in before they went through the door. They used to have something like that at every train station back in the old world. Well, neither of us had considered that a damn Shambler might be down here and the ugly thing got the drop on us, latched right onto Bailey's arm and sunk its teeth in. Fortunately, like I mentioned earlier, we were both as armoured up as you can get and there was no way that thing was going to bite through the metal plated arm guards that Bailey wore.

  He didn't even jump, and wasn't even the slightest bit surprised by the thing. He just stood up, pulled back that massive arm of his, and punched the creature smack in the face, launched it about ten feet and back into the booth that it had been hiding in.

  We learned something that day about the Shamblers. People always think that they just keep on going, but they don't. If they don't find a scent of a living thing for a while they seem to go into some kind of hibernation, just stand there perfectly still, or sit on the ground and do nothing. You can normally hear them coming easily, but if they were hibernating you wouldn't even know they were there. You know, they don't stink half as bad as what people think they should. I know that they look all rotten and festering, but in truth, they aren't. I don't know how it happens, but after a few days of wasting away and bleeding, it just stops. Then they stay like that for all eternity. I think it's something in the disease that does it, just stops them from rotting or falling apart, otherwise the flesh would all be gone in a few years, but you don't see skeletons walking around, do you?

  So, as I was saying, Bailey smacked this thing a good one in the middle of its face and it flew across the tunnel and crashed into the wall at the back of the booth.

  It didn't get up.

>   I was about to let loose with my shotgun when we both noticed it hadn't gotten back up again.

  "Well, I'll be damned," I said. "You just took out a Shambler with a single punch."

  Bailey laughed at that, really loud, and I joined in until we were both about falling over ourselves trying to get our breath back.

  Bailey is the only one I have ever seen take out a Shambler with a single punch. I've never seen it done since, but then I also have never seen a man that big. Of course, that didn't stop him walking right over to it and unloading a shot from his Shredder, straight into the thing's face.

  The Shambler was wearing a uniform similar to the ones that we'd found in a pile outside. Military.

  Bailey spent a while checking over that massive metal door whilst I went into the booth. I was careful now, just in case there was another of the rotten things hiding in there.

  There wasn't. All I found was an empty packet of cigarettes, a pile of already smoked butts, and a note.

  This note.

  Alice Aldenfield,

  I know this note will probably never reach you now that I have had to leave the bunker. I wish that I had been able to see you one last time, but it was unavoidable.

  We couldn't have known that there was a Shambler amongst the refugees. He was freshly infected that morning and thankfully I was the only one bitten by him. I voluntarily stepped back outside of the vault door before it was closed. The sergeant was sure that they could isolate me and attempt to find a cure, but even one person inside the bunker with the infection puts the entire facility at risk. A million people's lives depend on that door shutting and remaining shut before the Horde can get anywhere near it. That was what the General knew. He knew that if the bunker was sealed, as it was intended, for two hundred years, that the Horde would be long gone by then and the survivors might stand a chance of a new beginning.

  I know you will never read this. You will have passed away a long time before the door will be opened again, but I hope that you will still have children, just like you always wanted to. I hope that you will tell them about me, and maybe one day, when the vault is opened, this note will be here so that they can know about me.

  I have a few hours to try and figure out how to ensure that I don't return as a Shambler when I die. The General always said that infected people had about twelve hours until they turn. I will figure out how.

  I couldn't help but work this out in my head. You know what I'm like for useless bits of information. One million people in that bunker for two hundred years, with enough food and supplies to last the whole time, even taking birth rates into account. When the door opens there could be thirty five million people in the bunker. I always wondered why the General was insistent that only a mere one million people were to be allowed in, even though the charter and exploration teams that mapped the bunker when it was discovered said that they had estimated space for forty million people. Now it all makes sense. They planned it that way because they knew that two hundred years would nearly fill the place. Of course, what they hadn't planned was the possibility that there might only be a million or so people left anyway. We didn't find a million people to put in there, but we were close.

  If this log ever reaches the hands of the descendants of my dearest Alice then I wish you to know that I love you like you were my own, and I hope that you live a long and fulfilling life. I hope that the world outside the bunker is a place that you can thrive in.

  Love, Andy.

  That's right son. Sounds unbelievable, doesn't it?

  Of course, I read the note to Bailey and he stood there, thinking for a while. He did that a lot. He'd go quiet and just stare into space whilst he pondered whatever it was that was going through his head.

  "Thirty five million people on the other side of that door," he said, shaking his head.

  "Do you really think that's right?"

  "Says so, doesn't it?"

  "Well, yes, but...I don't know. It just seems hard to imagine."

  "Of course there might not be."

  I frowned at him.

  "Well, what if there was more than one Shambler in there when they shut the door?"

  "Oh my god."

  "Yeah, you got my picture there. We could be looking at that door opening and thirty five million people coming out of it, or we could be looking at a million Shamblers flooding out of there."

  We both stood there just looking at the door, wondering what the hell we were going to do about it. In all truth, we both knew that there was nothing we could do. Absolutely nothing. Bailey had looked the door over, examining the material it was made of, and he said that we just wouldn't be able to open it. It was too thick, too strong, and there was a massive electrical current holding the thing shut.

  When he said that, something clicked.

  "I don't think that there are Shamblers in there," I said.

  "What you mean?"

  "Well, if that electrical current is still holding the door shut, then it must mean that there is power being generated somewhere behind it, which means there has to be people in there, or the thing would have shut itself down years ago, wouldn't it?"

  "Depends what's powering it. Also depends if the system was built to last."

  After a while we decided that we just had to let it go, we had to leave anyway, the truck was rammed full of salvage and Bailey wanted to get off and sell some of it, which meant we had a long road ahead of us. At least this was what I presumed he would be thinking.

  I was wrong, and for the first time in fifteen years of travelling with Bailey, he shocked me.

  "Bout time you got that buzzer out and called up Joshua isn't it?"

  I just stood there in the darkness of that tunnel and stared at the man who I had been friends with for so long, just stood there, shocked.

  "How?"

  That was all I could muster up to say to him. I just didn't have the words.

  He laughed at me louder than I had ever heard him laugh before, big heaving chuckles.

  "You knew? All this time and you knew why I was here?"

  He nodded, still chuckling to himself.

  "Why do you think I found you on the road that day and picked you up?"

  "Well, I thought you did it out of kindness."

  "Kindness? No buddy. I did it because a certain acquaintance of ours sent me a message that I wasn't alone on this burned out rock. That he had placed another outrider here with a different job to do and that maybe we could help each other."

  "Why did you never tell me?"

  "Because Joshua told me that I shouldn't. He wanted you to find your own way and he said that I should give you some help. You need me to show you the scar on the back of my neck?"

  "No, I don't, but you've known all these damn years that we were both members of the Resistance and you never thought that you could trust me enough to tell me?"

  "I was under orders."

  "Orders? Orders damn it. We're supposed to be friends!"

  "And we are. You are the only man I would trust my life with. God's honest truth in that."

  "Do you know what I was sent here to do?"

  "Yes, I do, and in my reckoning you just finished the job."

  He was right.

  Find out how this world ended.

  Find out where the last resistance fell.

  Find out why.

  Find something important about this world that The Resistance can use to fight Nua'lath.

  That was what I was here to do and I figured that a million people, possibly thirty five million, hidden away in a bunker and just waiting to come out was something important.

  I was done. After fifteen years of wandering, I finally had a reason to press the button on that gadget.

  "Shall we make our way above ground?"

  I nodded.

  We walked back up the tunnel, slowly weaving our way through the rubble and the left over bits of scrap that Bailey had deemed of no use to us. About half way up the tunnel Bailey stopped. I di
dn't notice for a few seconds, but when I turned round he was just standing there looking straight at me with.

  "I need to say I'm sorry."

  I was taken aback by that. I'd never heard Bailey apologise to anyone in the whole time I had known him. He just never did it.

  "What are you apologising for?"

  He coughed, and I realised that he was actually embarrassed.

  "I'm apologising to you because you are the best friend I have ever had in my life, probably the only one that I can look to as a true friend, and I know you are disappointed that I kept it a secret all along."

  "You don't need to do this."

  "Yes, yes I do. Keeping it secret all these years has been the hardest thing for me, the hardest thing, ever. I didn't like doing it and I didn't understand why I had to in the first place. I was following my orders even though I felt it was wrong."

  "Apology accepted. Let's forget about it."

  I started walking back up the tunnel, and after a few moments I heard the dull thud of Bailey's footsteps behind me. I stopped after a hundred yards or so.

  "You want some more of this cake?" I asked him.

  So son, what do you make of this so far? Confusing? No? You thought your dad was just like any other man wandering around on this dead old rock, I bet. Well, I'm not saying that I'm anything special, but since coming to Gaia I've done a lot of things that I'm proud of, a lot of hard things.

  Come on. Let's get out of this tunnel and back up into the air. It's claustrophobic down here.

  You know, I spent a long time hunting down this place for no reason other than the whim of some guy who stopped me from killing myself, and after I finished that job I did a whole lot more.

  Of course, things are never quite so simple are they? I'd found what I was looking for and I was elated that we were heading back outside, and that I was finally going to be able to call Joshua and hand in my chips. I was also happy because the man who I had been travelling with all those years had suddenly become a big part of the same thing I was. Now, I didn't really know what The Resistance was back then, even though I'd been working for them for well over a decade, but I knew that it was important, and that I had succeeded in something very big.