Despite their sizeable arsenal of weapons and the huge psychological and intellectual advantage which they had over the dead, the soldiers and survivors alike knew that they were trapped. The men, women and children sheltering underground lived with a constant sense of uncomfortable claustrophobia and despair. The military occupied almost all of the complex (everything beyond the entrance to the decontamination chambers) with the thirty-seven survivors having to exist in the main hanger and a few adjacent storage, utility and maintenance rooms. Space, light, heat and comfort was severely limited. After fighting through the hell above ground, however, the limitations of the military facility were readily accepted and hugely appreciated. The alternatives which awaited them on the surface were unthinkable.
1
Emma Mitchell
It’s almost two o’clock.
I think it’s two o’clock in the morning, but I’m not completely sure. There’s no way of telling whether it’s day or night down here and, if I’m honest, it doesn’t matter.
Whatever time of day or night it is, it’s always dark. There are always some people sleeping and there are always other people awake. There are always people gathered in groups and huddles talking in secret whispers about nothing. There are always people crying, moaning, fighting and arguing.
There are always soldiers moving through the decontamination chambers or coming into the hanger to check, double-check and triple-check their stockpiled equipment and machinery.
I can’t sleep.
I’ve been lying here with Michael for the best part of two hours now. I always seem to feel guilty when we’ve been together like this and I can’t clear my head enough to switch off and sleep like he can. I wish I could. We haven’t done anything wrong. We’ve made love together four times in the three weeks since we’ve been down here and each time he’s slept for hours afterwards. When I ask him why he tells me that when we’ve been together like this he feels more human and complete than he does the rest of the time.
He tells me that what we do makes him feel the way he used to feel before all of this happened.
Sex is different now. In many ways it’s sad and it reminds me of everything I’ve lost. In other ways it helps me to realise what I’ve still got. I still get scared when I think about how easy it would be to lose Michael and how lucky I am that we managed to find each other and stay together. Sometimes I’m not sure if I sleep with him because I love him, or whether it’s because we just happen to be there for each other. There’s no room for romance and other long forgotten feelings anymore. I don’t think I’ll ever have another orgasm. I can’t imagine being relaxed or aroused enough to feel those kind of emotions again. When we’re together there’s no seduction or foreplay. All I want is to feel Michael inside me. I need the intimacy. He is the only positive part of my world. Everything is cold except his touch.
When we were above ground I hated this motorhome. I was trapped in here and it was all we had. Now it’s all I want. It’s where I spend most of my time. This is our little private space where we can shut ourselves away from the rest of the people we’re trapped down here with. We’re lucky to have this privacy and I appreciate it. The rest of them have no choice but to spend all day, every day with each other. I wonder whether they resent us? Even though I know they’re probably not interested, sometimes I think that they do. I’ve seen the way they look at us when we’re together.
I’m cold. I don’t know what the temperature’s like deeper underground on the other side of the decontamination chambers, but out here in the hanger it’s always freezing. You can usually see your breath in front of your face. The air is motionless and still although sometimes you can smell the decay and disease outside.
You’d think we’d be used to the smell of death by now, but none of us are. Yesterday I overheard a couple of soldiers talking about the air on the lower levels of the bunker. They said it’s getting thinner. They said there are so many bodies above ground now that the vents and exhaust shafts around the base are gradually becoming blocked by the sheer weight of corpses crammed around them. Cooper told me he expected that to happen sooner or later. He said that most of the vents are scattered over a couple of square miles. It scares me to think just how many bodies there must be above us now for them to be having such an effect.
Christ, there must be hundreds of thousands of those damn things up there.
Supplies are coming in.
Two suited soldiers have just emerged from the decontamination chambers to deliver our rations. The military don’t give us much, just enough to survive. I guess they’ve only got so much for themselves and I’m surprised we get anything. There’s going to come a point when the provisions they’ve hoarded in their storerooms run out.
Maybe it won’t matter by then. Donna Yorke keeps talking about how it’s going to be different in a few months time.
She says that by then the bodies will have rotted away to almost nothing and we’ll be able to live on the surface again because they’ll no longer be a threat to us. I hope she’s right. I believe her. I’ve no reason not to. We can’t stay down here forever.
Whatever happens to us the future is far less certain for the soldiers. Every time I see any of them I can’t help thinking about what’s going to happen to them. The air might still be filled with infection six years from now, never mind in six months. And how will they know if it ever becomes clear again? Are any of them going to be brave or stupid enough to take off their suits, put their heads above ground and risk breathing in? You can’t see much behind their protective masks but every so often you catch a flash of stifled emotion in their eyes. They’re as scared as we are. They don’t trust us. Sometimes I think they hate and despise us almost as much as they do the bodies. Maybe they’re keeping us here because they want to use us? Perhaps they’re planning on forcing us to scour the surface to stock up their stores and provide them with food and water?
I put on Michael’s thick winter coat and walk over to the nearest window to get a better view of what’s happening outside. The window is covered in condensation. I wipe it away but it’s still difficult to see what’s going on. The lights in the hanger are almost always turned down to their lowest setting. I guess they do it to conserve power. It only gets any brighter when the soldiers are about to go outside and that hasn’t happened for well over a week now. The doors have only been opened once since we’ve been down here. Two days after we arrived outside they tried to go out to clear the mess we’d made getting in. They started to open the doors but there were too many bodies. They burned the first few hundred of them with flame-throwers but there were thousands more behind.
I can see Cooper checking over the vehicles that he and the other people from the city arrived here in. You can tell just by watching him that he used to be a soldier. Even though he has nothing to do with the rest of the military now he’s still regimented and he has a level of control and confidence that none of the others possess. I often see him exercising and sometimes, when the army are out of sight, he gets small groups of people together and tries to show them how to use the military equipment left lying around here. Most of the time no-one’s interested. Cooper checks the battered police van and prison truck at least once every day to make sure they’re still in working order. What does he think’s going to happen to them? They’re not being used and apart from him no-one else has been anywhere near them in days. I asked him about it yesterday. He told me that we can’t afford to take any chances. He told me that we have be ready to get out of here quickly if we need to.