It was at that point that I noticed the sink. I mean, I’d known it was there before, but for some reason, my mind had totally blanked out, and I’d gone to the toilet instead. A brain fart, Drew would have called it. I chalked it up to fear and stress. Both were weighing on me. My mind had just had a little blip. That was all. After wiping my face and hands with some paper towels, I left the restroom and looked for a place to hide.
I emerged into another hallway and found myself at a crossroads. If I went left, I’d walk down a gray concrete four-hundred and thirty-three foot long tunnel that led to a dead end—the bunker’s mountainside blast door. A right turn would take me deeper into the bunker via the facility’s sprawling power plant, which was still operational. I could hear the distant roar of the power plant’s generators from where I stood. Beyond the power plant was a stairwell that led down to the lower level, where Chuck and the others were. I didn’t want to risk running into them, so I turned left and hurried down the tunnel. I walked briskly at first, but then panic took over and I broke into a jog. My shoes slapped against the concrete. The sounds echoed off the walls, and I hoped the hum of the generators would drown them out.
I caught a whiff of myself as I ran. The smell made me grimace. I stank—the unfortunate effect of weeks without showering or washing my clothes, with the added effect of the ketosis ravaging my starved body, and the puke I’d spewed all over myself in the incinerator room. My faded jeans, long-sleeved black shirt, socks, and boxer-briefs with various DC Comics superheroes on them were all stiff enough to stand up by themselves. My hair felt stiff, too, long past the point of just being greasy. The whiskers on my face itched and made my skin sore. I’d never had a beard until we came underground. I’d washed in the sink as often as possible, but that didn’t really get me clean. We’d gone through the restroom’s meager supply of hand soap in the first week, and other than some bottle of hand sanitizer, none of us had any other soaps or cleaners on us when we got stuck down here. I longed for many things—food, a decent night’s sleep, toothpaste, a cold beer, someone to hold—but more than any of these things, with the possible exception of food, what I wanted most was to take a hot shower. I wanted to stand under a scalding, forceful stream of water and just close my eyes and not move.
Right after I ate something, of course.
The corridor seemed to stretch out before me, as if the end was racing ahead, always out of reach. I’d walked it so many times, but it had never seemed longer than it did at that moment. It was silent, save for my echoing footsteps and the background noise from the power plant. The overhead lights glowed brightly, casting their stark, fluorescent radiance over everything. There were no shadows to hide in. No dark corners to duck into. The gray concrete walls were featureless except for stenciled signs advising me of where the exit was located. Water supply pipes ran overhead, along with ductwork and electrical conduits. There were several sewer grates in the floor. I paused over one, debating whether to duck down into the sewer and hide out there, and then decided against it. I’d choose that as a last resort.
As I approached the end of the tunnel, the blast door loomed into view. There was a small cul-de-sac to the left, right before the tunnel terminated at the door. Parked inside this little nook were two old forklifts, leftovers from when the bunker had been an active site. The hotel had inherited them and they’d sat here ever since. Occasionally, one of the maintenance staff would hop on one and ride it around, but they were only really used when it came to changing the fluorescent lights overhead. One worker would stand on the forks, balanced precariously along with a case of light bulbs, while his co-worker would raise the forks up to the ceiling. One forklift was a bright orange Toyota model. The other was a yellow Caterpillar. Both operated on propane, and both had full canisters strapped behind them. My fellow survivors had only used them once since the siege had started—Chuck had suggested a forklift race to break the monotony after several weeks. It had sufficed, until the exhaust fumes building up in the tunnel had started to make us sick.
Stacked behind the forklifts were three diesel generators, each still sitting on a skid and wrapped with plastic. Another skid was stacked with boxes of replacement fluorescent bulbs. A metal rack held a few spare propane bottles for the forklifts. Hanging on the wall next to it was a fire extinguisher. Although the lighting in the cul-de-sac was just as bright as the rest of the tunnel, there was a shadowy area between the wall and the skids. If I needed to, I could hide there. Chances were I’d be discovered if anyone approached closely, though.
“Maybe the zombies aren’t out there anymore,” I whispered. “Maybe they’ve moved on. Maybe I can sneak out right now before anyone finds me.”
Even as I said it, I knew I’d be wrong. It was wishful thinking, and nothing more. I might as well have said, “Maybe aliens will arrive and take me to the lost planet of Nibiru, which is populated by Sports Illustrated swimsuit models.” Sighing, I turned my attention to the blast door. Mounted on the wall overhead was a closed circuit television monitor. Since we still had power, the unit was still functioning. I stared at the grainy, washed out black and white image. Hundreds of dead milled around the door, pawing at the entrance. Most of them looked like they’d been out there a while. The ones closest to the door were in bad shape. One particularly fermented corpse seemed to be stuck to the door, as if the sun had melted him onto it like the syrupy remains of a popsicle left out in the sun on a sidewalk. Insects crawled all over—and through—him. Many of the zombies were missing limbs. One had been completely hollowed. The decay and damage were so bad that I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. All that remained of them from the neck down to their waistline was an empty, gaping cavity. Several zombie animals were in the group, as well. The most grotesque of all was a severed head. I caught a glimpse of it as the corpses momentarily parted. Its blackened tongue protruded from its mouth, and its eyes moved back and forth, desperately seeking prey even though it could no longer hunt.
Suddenly, I was overwhelmed with a desire to be outside with them. The urge was so strong that I had to stop myself from reaching for the wheel to open the door. On the other side of that impregnable steel was the sky and fresh air and green trees and grass. I wanted so badly to experience those things again. I wanted to feel the sun’s warmth on my skin, or to stand beneath the shade of a tree as the leaves rustled softly above me. I wanted to smell fresh-cut grass and honeysuckle and pines. I wanted to hear birds chirping and squirrels chattering at one another. I wanted to feel the wind. To taste it. To hear it. Hell, I’d have been ecstatic just to feel the bite of a mosquito or to hear the buzz of a bumblebee. All I had was the sounds of the bunker, and after being cooped up down here, those sounds had left me demoralized and depressed—and apparently, they’d driven my fellow survivors crazy.