A Bunker Girl's Story

"It'll take you a while to adjust, but in time you will become acclimated to your new surroundings, your new way of life", the booklet seemed to mock Eleri, it had been given to her, along with an apartment, some money in a bank account, everything to start her life over. She'd only known one type of existence, in a military bunker, her parents worked for the government, both high-ranking intelligence agents, they'd been assigned to homeland security, given the task of preparing for the inevitable, another global pandemic. There are very few certainties in the course of one's life, death, taxes, and that the "pendulum swings both ways", as her father liked to say, meaning that, the universe always balances itself out. He would sit in the antique rocking chair and talk about how things used to be, one of the few pieces of "real" furniture her parents were able to put in the bunker, most of it was government-issued, sterile, hard, and with numbers in black spray-painted on it, making the isolation seem amplified. Eleri was born into that bleak, solitaire world, she took her first breath inside the bunker, her mother had been heavily pregnant when mandatory lockdown had been imposed, mass hysteria ensued, riots, luting, violent crimes, homelessness, famine, mass suicides," hell on earth" unleashed.

An order went out to procure suitable lockdown "housing", in other words, everyone was required to own a military-grade bunker, failure to comply could result in stiff fines or even death, a lottery consisting of six million tickets was created, a decision made based on the limited number of natural and man-made resources, selective extermination, which under different circumstances, would be unconscionable. The president and other world leaders received death threats, there were several assassination attempts on high-ranking officials, members of the clergy called it an abomination in the sight of God. Fire and brimstone sermons replaced by the renouncing of the "inexcusable slaughter of innocents", as a particular preacher termed it in a recorded message he left behind, just before shooting himself. He quoted scripture after scripture, all having to do with the wrath of the all mighty, judgment of the guilty, and the eternal torment awaiting those responsible. Entire families decided to exit on their own terms, preferring not to leave their fates to the whims of chance, catastrophic loss, unimaginable horror, unparalleled in the annals of human history. Humanity seemed poised to meet its end for all time, utter hopelessness, helplessness, rampant.

In the midst of total chaos, bunkers started popping up like strange metal flowers, dotting the landscape, turning picturesque views into tragic reminders of what was being ripped violently from mankind, transforming a once-familiar world into a place as foreign as if it were Mars or Uranus, completely alien. Eleri's earliest memories being stories of desperation, despicable treachery, heartbreaking sacrifice, bravery, and every shade of humanity in between. Children are usually taught reading, writing, arithmetic, arts, and sciences, she was educated in these subjects of course, but such things were considered secondary, the primary lessons were survival skills, how to make meager rations last an unbelievably long period of time. Rationing everything from food, to conserving electricity and water, nothing was taken for granted, inhabitants of each bunker living in exactly the same way. Clocks and calendars totally obsolete, her growth marked the years, her birthdays served as the only marker of the passage time. Here's a strange truth, the mind, as marvelous as it is, can be tricked into believing or remembering that which it knows to be false, under certain circumstances, a lie becomes the truth, the truth a lie, even someone deemed as "normal" would "crack-up" in this environment.

Environmental factors, emotional fragility, along with different personalities, all conspire to create a powderkeg, which, under the right amount of pressure will explode. The bunker, although spacious, became little more than a prison, with utter madness just a breath away. Sitting in the emptiness that occupied the space between the four walls, Eleri shuttered, "One day, your life won't be defined by the confines of this dreadful bunker", her aunt would constantly remark, with a blank expression on her face, tears on the verge of betraying her words. Aunt Ona, a woman who never married, she'd been a flight attendant, a writer, an artist, but above all, her favorite storyteller, her stories were full of adventure, suspense, comedy, tragedy, but more importantly, they were about a world she never experienced, a place she wished she could. The disapproving looks coming from her mother would usually put the kibosh on the whole conversation, then off to bed she'd go. Her dreams were always full of great deeds of daring-do, mountain climbing, battling dragons, skydiving, flying planes, her dreams, her great escape from her grim reality. Eighteen years of life spent surrounded by the threat of mutiny, insanity, even death, she just wanted to know what her new normal was going to be, lost is the only thing she felt at this moment.

How does someone adjust to a world outside of a box? The post-pandemic world had the appearance of a post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie, the soil, and air contaminated due to the use of chemical agents, in a bid to eradicate the virus. Conventional methods, vaccines, medications, blood transfusions, genetic manipulation, all unsuccessful. In utter desperation, every world leader had voted to unleash lethal amounts of an experimental chemical known as JRW-117, invented by a Swedish chemist. Johannas Johns invented the nefarious weapon in expectation of chemical warfare, it would be more deadly than any substance known to history, it had been used to "cleanse the planet", after several years passed, a counter agent would be dispensed through mechanical means, to neutralize the toxicity. The residents of the bunkers were then alerted that it was safe to exit their respective homes, emerging as if butterflies from cocoons, they stood frozen by uncertainty and fear. Life began to slowly resemble "normal", people very quickly rebuild, shaken, but not broken. Resiliency is perhaps the most beautiful of all human traits, against unimaginable horrors, we persevere, to come out stronger than before.

We never see disaster coming, as a rule, therefore, we aren't adequately prepared in most cases. It isn't the things we are comfortable with that show us what we are made of, it's in fact, catastrophe. If pandemics and other cataclysmic events didn't stir us from our complacency, waking us from our blissful obliviousness, as a species, we would petrify. Eleri would acclimate, after all, adaptability was something she and the survivors had mastered, a "positive side effect" from living an isolated existence, inside a military bunker. Isolation breeds a savage mentality in some people, while others demonstrate compassion, disasters really do bring out the best and worst in us. Eleri hoped nothing would rob her or her fellow survivors of the peace and tranquility they were now enjoying, praying that another plague wouldn't befall humanity, certain it most likely would, knowing that, whatever happened in the future, human beings, like the majestic phoenix, "will always rise from the ashes". `