The End before the Beginning

The solitary lightbulb set into the ceiling of the small bunker flickers, threatening to cast us into complete darkness. The glinting causes the shadows cast across the cement walls to dance, the sight perhaps more chilling than darkness itself—at least in the dark you don’t see as death creeps up on you.

Even after the decades of nuclear weapons looming over us like death itself—ever menacing, ever drawing nearer, but rarely paid heed to. Even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after the Cold War, after Yeltsin, after the Eastern conflict…still, no one saw it coming. In hindsight, it was as inevitable as it was unfathomable. All it took was one person: too hungry for power, or too curious for anyone’s good, to doom us all.

They say the bombs were a work of genius. As the first and last step in the destruction of the human race, regular nukes weren’t even sufficient. These were special. Not only would the strike sites be levelled—destined to burn and have all life choked out by a blanket of ash, not only would every particle be poisoned with radioactivity, but the nuclear fallout itself was laced with a bioweapon that turned every living organism into the things of nightmares. No one knows exactly what it does to humans, but when the commination video was leaked and circulated the internet, the world was gripped with shock and horror. Whatever that thing was, it certainly did not resemble the human it had once supposedly been. For the rare exceptions born with the mutation that provides immunity to the damning symptoms of radioactive exposure—this added consequence ensured that nothing could escape a most dreadful fate. For there to be a New Beginning…there must first be an End. I will never forget the sight of these words in bold, splayed across screens before everyone in every nation in the foreground of a horrendous scene. It wasn’t long after that we found ourselves here, at the End before the Beginning.

The scientist who designed the weapons must have been truly evil, or truly insane—maybe both. Their identity was never revealed, known only to the world as Thanatos: God of Death. They used American silos to launch them…how they could possibly have overtaken such a military force and gotten away with the genocide of the entire human race I’ll likely never know. The government of course denied any culpability, right before they forewarned the end of the world.

I suppose you could call us lucky—some of the few with a relative just crazy enough to prepare for the doomsday everybody, and nobody, saw coming. The bunker was built to keep everything out—the only fault I see in that design, is that it also keeps everything in. Sometimes I envy the victims who were taken swiftly, their minds not yet paranoid with fear, their last sight the open sky…

The first few days in the bunker, I was in such a state of shock that I was grateful for this cement prison. By the fourth night I had my first dream about escape, and they have recurred every night since. I say night, but it has been so long since our phones, clocks, and watches died that “night” is just the word we use for the oblivion that is sleep. ‘Nights’ when I can imagine that I can drill, pry, dig, fight my way out of this hell—out to whatever awaits. The narrow passageway, barely wide enough for me to walk through facing forwards, is off limits. At the end of the passage is a sheer-faced vertical tunnel so high you can’t see the meter-thick steel hatch far above it—the one that I watched close behind me all those years ago, and seal my fate. So every time I sleep, I dream I can change it. The ending is always the same: I finally heave open that door. At last, I squint into the first rays of sunlight just creeping in through the small opening I have made…and then I wake up. Perhaps this is always the case because I don’t know what awaits me on the outside, or perhaps it is a warning that whatever it may be, I have no chance of surviving. Whatever lies beyond these walls—even if that means a slow, agonizing death—it is better than this torture.

*****

Our food supply is dwindling now. The bunker was equipped to last 50 years, for a family of four. There are 28 of us cramming this 500 square-foot space. Our uncle showed my brother and I this place when we were kids. I was almost too young to remember, but Wyatt did, so when we heard about the launch we sped down the desolate freeway to our father’s only brother’s rural farm with abandon. Apparently, everyone else who knew of its presence did the same. I can’t count hours or sunrises to know how long we’ve been down here, but judging by the supplies remaining, I would say it is nearing on seven years…nearing our expiry date. The bunker wasn’t meant to sustain this many people, a fact we all know too well, but none have been bold enough to say aloud. It’s been awhile since we all started subtly taking less than our allocated portions, longer still since we stopped washing ourselves with our precious remaining water. The stench has grown to be almost unbearable, but mostly I am so withdrawn into myself that I am hardly aware of my senses. A survival mechanism I suppose.

*****

The only time when I am intentionally conscious of myself and my surroundings is when I exercise. Many of us started doing it, but very few still do. I can’t let myself stop for fear that when the time comes and I finally have to scale that sheer tunnel, or turn that immense handwheel, I cannot be weak. I know now that I will die, but it won’t be without fighting—without knowing what that new beginning looks like outside these four walls. I breathe through the burn spreading through my abdomen, keeping my arms crossed tightly across my chest. Faster. Harder. This is how you will survive. Maybe. When I finally collapse to the hard ground with exhaustion, I don’t bother trying to get comfortable before closing my eyes, welcoming the oblivion that is sleep.

*****

I jolt awake, cold and damp with sweat. Something isn’t right. I dreamed of my escape as I always do, but I awoke before I reached the end of the narrow passage. A scream pierces through the heavy air and echoes between the tight walls. The bunker is brighter than normal. I spot the additional source of light across the room. A fire has been started—something we rarely do say for dire circumstances since eating up our precious little oxygen with carbon monoxide is imprudent to say the least. The smell hits me like a truck, knocking the air out of my lungs. I’m petrified of beholding the source, but my eyes defiantly scan the room. A young woman with long dark hair lies in the corner. Too still. Her hair falls into her eyes, obscuring her face. Her arm is soaked in deep red…because her skin is missing. My brain races to process the sight before me. My gaze turns back to the fire. An older man holds something over it on a metal skewer. He lifts it to his lips.

The smell: burning flesh. I vomit before blacking out.

I wake in a puddle of my own bile, but the smell isn’t nearly as bad as…my stomach turns and I cover my mouth with my hands, pushing down the nausea. Tears begin streaking my face.

“She was already dead. And the food…it won’t last as long as we’d hoped.” I hear it whispered across the room, but sound carries in here. This is it: the End. Not the bombs, not that door sealing shut, not the day I stopped talking, stopped listening. This. When our humanity, our souls are lost, and we are no better than those who forced us here. I need to get OUT. My head spins as I stumble to my feet. I brace myself on the wall and catch my breath. Then, I run.

I try to sprint down the narrow passage towards that daunting tunnel ahead, but it is narrower than I remember, the walls pressing against my shoulders, the friction slowing me down. I turn my body at an angle and shuffle along as quickly as my legs will carry me. They do not quake with fear, and I do not falter with hesitation. I am driven by pure adrenaline—my breath steady and even with resolute concentration. I have dreamed of this thousands of times and there is no more time for scheming. No more second chances. Right now I have but two choices: die, or die trying. I know which one I’d choose every time.

When the narrow walls finally open into a small rotunda I pause for a moment to strategize. I have attempted to scale the tunnel above me many times and many different ways. My first while in the bunker I dreamed of ascending as though I were skydiving: my hands and feet braced on the walls and my gaze turned down. I rarely reached the top, and often awoke with a headache. Later I tried to starfish my hands and feet against the sides, moving ever so slowly upwards, but without any grips or footholds to aid my ascent, I soon lost my strength. As much as I tried, it mostly led to me falling part way up and breaking my legs, or worse. The other method came recently, when my mind seemed to register that I must have grown in the near decade I’ve rotted down here, and perhaps my legs were now long enough to span the diameter of the tunnel. I take a single breath to pray that my envisaging will hold up in my waking trials too, and press my back against the smooth, cold surface, lifting each of my legs so that my knees bend slightly as my feet press securely against the opposite face. Pressing my hands to the wall behind me to provide extra grip, I begin my ascent. I shift each leg only an inch or two with each motion, keeping my core tight and my legs and back pressed against the cement with all the strength I can muster. It will have to be enough, there is no other way. I do not look down, even when I hear the shouting and cursing below me, growing more vicious as men far stronger than I try to throw themselves against the walls, but barely make it off the ground before crashing back down. I know they have not gotten very high because I don’t hear any bones snap when they fall. I look up and coming into focus is the blast door with its immense aluminum handwheel. The nights I made it that far, wrenching it open sucked from me every bit of strength I had left. I now know I am willing to give every bit of it and more.

Clinging to the bit of hope that rises within me to carry me still higher, the bloodthirsty shouts below me fade away. I begin to yearn for the sunlight to sting my perpetually dilated pupils and to breathe different air, no matter how fresh. A scream escapes me as I slip several meters before catching myself—slamming one foot and my back, and head, against the hard surface. My vision blurs. I can’t tell whether seconds or minutes have past before I realize the reason for my fall. My ankle, the one not bracing me, is held in a tight grip by a large, strong hand just below me. 

“I can’t let you do this.” For the first time during my escape, fear rises within me as I register the voice. Not just from the bunker, but from my whole life. I dare a glance below to ensure my mind is not hallucinating a nightmare so terrible I had never dared dream it. Surely enough, the face twisted in brutal determination beneath me belongs to Wyatt, my only brother. “I can’t let you kill us all.”

“Oh, but waiting around for people to die and then butchering and eating them! That’s okay?!”

“We all knew this time would come.”

“Well I promised myself I wouldn’t be around when it happened!”

“What are you thinking? That you escape, and then what? You’ll die up there.”

“Probably. But at least I didn’t give up the minute that door closed behind us.”

“Don’t you understand? You didn’t have to. We’re all dead anyway. All we’re trying to do is last a little longer.”

He’s not wrong. Even if by some freak miracle any of us survive this place, or out there, in a few decades…dust to dust and all that. It will be as if we never existed at all. The same as if we’d died in that initial blast. No one, no world, to remember us. What he doesn’t understand though, is that this is not how I’ll go. I won’t surrender my life simply out of fear. And I certainly will never resort to losing my humanity and stealing life from another person. If I’m going out, it will be on my terms: fighting for the possibility, no matter how small, that maybe there is a new beginning worth fighting for. 

We are thirty meters up at least. The fall would surely kill him. Then again, if he lives now, we will all surely die. Including me. Without warning, I tug my ankle from his grip and raise my knee nearly to my chest before slamming my foot down to meet his face. He slips easily, and I don’t let myself look long after I see his body twisted, and unmoving on the ground below.

Whether the mob displays their shock and anger in silence or screams, I don’t hear. All I hear is my breath and my heart beating in my ears as I scale the last distance as though this is what I’d been waiting for my whole life. I suppose in a way it is. When I reach the top, I wipe my clammy hands on my filth-stained shirt and grasp the cold metal. My arms scream at the resistance of the multiple locks I know span the circumference of the door. I summon every ounce of strength I have, and still it does not budge. My teeth are gritting, my body is aching, sweat is streaming into my eyes, and I am about ready to concede. But I can’t, not after getting this far. Not knowing what awaits me below. The force needed to get this wheel turning, I know I cannot get like this…I’ll have to use my whole body. Before I can second guess myself, I remove my legs from the wall in front of me, and find myself hanging by my hands. I swing and catch the opposite point on the wheel with my free hand. I splay my legs and kick out so that my feet are braced on opposite sides of the tunnel. I push off the wall with one leg, push with one arm and pull with the other, and twist my body with a strength I did not know I possessed. The grinding of rusted metal as the bolts slide free from their chambers is the most glorious sound I have ever heard. I brace my feet against the walls once more and push against the immense door with my shoulders and back. I lift my head and the sunlight stings my eyes…