When I reached the top, I paused at the chute door and listened. I was far enough up that the sounds from below had faded, and although I could still smell burning metal, the stench wasn’t as overpowering. I didn’t hear anything from the shower room, and was fairly certain it was unoccupied, but I was still concerned that Chuck and the others would be able to hear me through the ductwork. By this point, the pain in my muscles and joints had grown excruciating. My body was starting to tremble and my vision was blurred to the point of blindness. I opened the chute door very slowly. When there was no reaction, I thrust my head through the opening. The air in the empty shower room felt cool upon my face, and I sighed with relief. Wiping the stinging sweat from my eyes, I slowly crawled out of the chute and plopped down onto the floor. A quick glance around confirmed that I was alone. Either the searchers hadn’t reached this level yet, or my escape hadn’t been discovered. I wondered how long it would take them to cut through the door to the incinerator room. At least a few more minutes, judging by how long it had taken me to climb up the chute. That bought me a little precious time, but once they’d broken into the room and figured out where I’d gone, that time would run out. Despite the danger, I sat there for a few moments until I’d caught my breath and the pain in my muscles had subsided. Then I scrambled to my feet and tried to figure out what the hell to do next.
The shower room was a small, ugly space. It smelled faintly of mildew and unidentifiable chemicals, despite the fact that the hotel staff (myself included) had cleaned it once a week ever since tours of the bunker began. The showers themselves had been disconnected years ago—the pipes and plumbing cut off. Now they were just exhibits. There had been rumors among some of the employees that the room was haunted. Supposedly, people occasionally heard the phantom sound of water dripping, or heard disembodied footsteps. Once, a tourist from Wisconsin asked her tour guide who the little girl standing under one of the shower nozzles was. When the tour guide didn’t see anyone there, the tourist had insisted that she’d seen a little girl. I don’t know if there was really a ghost or not, although it occurred to me that if I didn’t think of something quick, my spirit stood a good chance of haunting these halls. Maybe we all would—a different kind of dead from the ones outside. Ghosts, rather than zombies, our spirits haunting those who had experienced a different kind of life after death. The thought gave me chills. My skin prickled.
Personally, I never saw or heard anything weird in the shower room—unless you count the drunken tourist who passed out in there once and cracked his head open when he fell—but the décor alone was enough to give me the creeps. The walls, floor and ceiling were covered in small, faded-yellow tiles, many of which were cracked or chipped. The overhead lights were weak, and their radiance had always seemed washed-out and sickly to me. The space was devoid of furnishing, except for the showerheads, a drain in the slightly-sloped floor, and the burn chute from which I’d just climbed out of. A rack was affixed to one wall. It displayed several coarse brooms and brushes, which would have been used to scrub any irradiated survivors upon their admission into the bunker. On the floor beneath it sat an empty canister of delousing agent. The brooms and the canister were nothing more than museum pieces now. I’d gestured to them a hundred times while giving tours, droning on monotonously about their intended usage while secretly wishing the work day was over so I could get home to Alyssa. It had never occurred to me at the time that I’d one day be using them as weapons, but that’s exactly what I did next. I grabbed one of the brooms from the rack, twisted off the broom itself, and then snapped the handle down over my knee. I was weak enough from hunger that I had to do this three times before the handle snapped, and I got a big, purple bruise on my knee in the process. I stared at the jagged lengths in my hand. Now I had two spears. They were crude, yes, but they were better than nothing, and if Chuck and the others weren’t armed, they might make all the difference. Just holding them made me feel better and more confident. My panic subsided a bit, and I paused long enough to consider my options.
The shower room had one exit, an open doorway that led directly into the decontamination center, which, while a much larger space, had the same depressing décor as the shower area. The only difference is the tiles were blue rather than piss-yellow. Like much of the rest of the bunker, the decontamination center had been left as is in order to show visitors what it would have been like if operational. That appearance could be summed up in one word—boring. The only furnishings was an empty metal desk, a chair, and a row of rusty, gunmetal-gray filing cabinets, all of which were also empty. At one point, the lower drawer in the farthermost left filing cabinet had contained one of my fellow tour guides’ vintage porn magazine collection, but that had been discovered by my fellow survivors weeks ago and promptly disseminated—complete with pages stuck together from previous viewings. I didn’t care. Having come of age by looking at porn on the internet, the magazines had always struck me as kind of kitschy. They were something my father would have looked at.
My thoughts turned to him. He’d been gone four years now. He’d suffered a massive and sudden brain hemorrhage while mowing the lawn. Both my mother and myself had always been after him to let me do it, but my father had vehemently declined all offers of assistance. My grandfather had been the same way. At the age of ninety, he’d climbed a ladder and replaced some missing tiles on his roof, adamant that he could still do it himself—and he had. My parents had put him in a home soon after, which had broken his heart. It broke my parents’ hearts, too. My mother had passed on two years after my father, after a short battle with advanced lymphoma that hadn’t been caught in time. In her final years, she’d fervently hoped that Alyssa and I would give her a grandbaby. We never did, though, and I was glad for that now, for a number of reasons, the first and foremost of which was the zombies. Who in their right mind would bring a kid into this shit? I was glad that my parents and my grandfather weren’t around anymore. The state of the world would have broken their hearts more than the old folks home or the lack of a grandbaby ever had.
For a brief moment, I considered trying to unscrew one of the metal legs from the desk, but I decided against it. I didn’t have any tools and attempting to do it with my fingers would take too much time. What I needed to do was find some place safe to hide out, and then I could plan my next move. Surrender was out of the question, but fighting everyone in the bunker didn’t seem like a realistic option, either, especially when armed only with a broken broom handle.
The decontamination center had a small restroom that was still functional. We’d kept it closed and off limits to tour groups, but me and the other guides had still used it from time to time, mostly to sneak a cigarette or when we had to go really bad and wouldn’t be able to wait until we’d reached the other side of the bunker, where the public restrooms were. The door to the restroom was open, and although the light was off inside, I was certain there was nobody hiding in there and waiting for me. I ducked inside, knelt, and raised the toilet seat. Then I cupped my hands, dipped them into the water, and took several deep draughts. I wasn’t grossed out by the thought of drinking from the toilet. I’d long since given up caring about such civilized niceties. Besides, dogs drank out of toilets, and dogs were the best creatures on the planet. The only thing I did mind was the room-temperature water’s faint chemical taste. I grimaced as I drank. I gorged myself, unsure of when I’d be able to drink again. Who knew how long I’d have to be in hiding, or how Drew would find me—if he was even alive to find me. I felt very guilty over the possibility that Drew might pay the price for my actions, but that didn’t stop me from continuing on. I splashed some water on my face and then stood up.