All dead, all dead

A loud scraping.

A deep woosh.

We looked at each other, bewildered. It’s not that we didn’t recognise the sound, we did. The door had made the same sounds when it closed. It’s just that the door isn’t supposed to open for another four months.

Pete took the initiative, of course, he’s our leader. He was tall with long legs, so it only took him three steps to reach the radio.

‘This is team bunker, calling for team science.’

Team bunker is what we called ourselves, team science is the team of ‘scientists’ that lead this operation. Stupid names we came up with because we were bored. Bored, but not very original, clearly.

‘Team science, this is Peter Andreassen from team bunker. Are you there?’

Static.

Pete looked worried. That made me feel worried, too, because Pete doesn’t get worried. He just doesn’t.

We’ve been here for eight months. For eight months the only thing we heard when everyone was silent were our own thoughts. And now, I hear the songs of birds and the soothing, rustling sound of trees in the wind. And… is that a stream?

‘Why did the door open?’

Yes, that’s the question. Why did the door, that wasn’t supposed to open for another four months, just open? And, why isn’t anyone answering our calls?

Pete still has the radio in his hand.

‘Team science, did you just open the door?’

Static.

Ania breaks the silence.

‘Maybe it’s part of the experiment? And they just didn’t tell us because…’ she looks around, hoping someone will finish her sentence. Leo does, after a couple seconds.

‘To test our genuine reaction?’

Ania nods quickly, but no one looks really convinced. I clear my throat.

‘What do we do? Pete?’

He has his back turned to us, staring at the concrete wall.

‘We should… check it out. I think.’

No one seemed really comfortable with this, but what else were we going to do? Stay here, while the door is open?

~

God. I wish we did.

It took us about half a day to get out of the woods our bunker was located in. At the edge, we noticed the first weird thing. Or, Sami did.

He stopped abruptly in his tracks.

‘Do you guys hear that?’

We all stopped, too, and listened. I didn’t hear anything but silence. ‘No?’

‘Exactly.’

We all looked confused, but then it clicked.

‘No birds.’

Sami nodded, worried.

‘No birds.’

~

We did find the birds, eventually. Dead. Scattered on the damp forest floor. The closer we got to the city, the more there were.

And deer, too. Squirrels. Multiple wild boars. All dead.

‘What… happened?’

~

‘Anybody here?’

Pete’s voice echoed through the barn. We’d found an old farm. The house next to the farm looked like it had been lived in, recently, but we hadn’t found anybody. Yet. Outside, the chickens laid dead in their coop. The cows in the field didn’t move, either. And no flies buzzed around them. They were probably dead too.

‘Guys…’ O god. I did not like how that sounded.

It was Smithy. They held stood in the opening of the double doors, leading to the back of the farm.

‘I found the farmer.’

Dead.

The farmer was dead.

~

We didn’t have much time to process our first dead body, as it only got worse from there. The closer we came to the city centre, the more bodies we saw.

People sitting dead in their cars, head on the wheel. Some even had children in the back. No sign of struggle anywhere. It all looked quite normal, really. If you ignored all of the dead bodies. But we couldn’t. They were everywhere.

Leo was the first one to break. When it got dark, we entered an office building. We climbed all the way to the top, looking for anyone who was still alive. No one. So we set up camp on the highest floor.

When we woke up, the window was open and Leo was dead. He jumped.

~

It took a couple of hours to calm Sami down. We were all in shock, but Sami and Leo had been close. Really close. We always suspected something was going on between them. It also didn’t help that Sami was the first one to see Leo’s body.

‘It’s just us now.’ he sobbed. ‘Leo is gone. Everyone is gone and it’s just us four now.’

Us four being Pete, Smithy, Sami and me.

‘You don’t know that. We don’t know that. Right guys?’ Smithy looked at us, begging us with their eyes to back them up.

‘Yeah, no, we don’t know that, Sam’ I took his hand in mine. ‘We’ll go to the office of team science, and they’ll be there and they’ll explain everything. Right Peter?’

Pete looked tired, he clearly hadn’t slept. ‘Yeah. Yeah. They’ll explain.’

No one believed it. But still, we went.

~

We should never have accepted their invite. We trusted a team of complete strangers. We call them ‘team science’ because all we know is they do something with science. Something with science. God, how could we have been so stupid, so naive? But it was just one year in a bunker, and our family would receive 100.000 dollars. We didn’t have anything to lose. So we accepted.

~

‘We’re here.’

It took us two full days to find the building. Even though we had all lived here our entire lives, the city suddenly seemed a lot bigger when everyone is dead and you’re on foot. We wasted half a day going in circles because I thought I recognised something, until Pete pointed out it wasn’t working.

But we found it, eventually.

‘Ready? We’re gonna walk up these stairs and find the team. They’re going to explain what’s happening and then everything will be fine.’ Pete seemed to try to convince himself more than us, but we all nodded.

So we planted our feet on the first steps of the stairs, the elevator didn’t work, and climbed.

~

‘Day 240. In three days, the teens will have passed eight months in the bunker. No suspicion from them. We move on to stage two.’

Stage two? I looked at Smithy. They had found the recordings and pressed play, and still stood in the same place with the remote in their hand, staring at the screen.

‘Day 241. We’ve tested the gas on a few farms around the city. No flaws found. Tomorrow, we will release the gas over the city.’

The gas?

‘Day 242. We released the gas in the city. A breach has been discovered… the… the gas is spreading in the building. The door of the bunker is programmed to open tomorrow. I don’t… think we’ll make it. Experiment failed.’

The man on the screen is coughing uncontrollably and an alarm is blaring in the background.

On the next clip, no one is on the screen. It’s the same room as the last clips though. Suddenly, we hear a click, and a computer voice.

‘Door opened.’

Then, the screen turns black.

They didn’t want to test the bunker. Or us. They wanted to cause the apocalypse.

Everyone is dead.

My parents. My friends. Everyone I knew before this.

‘It’s just us now.’ whispers Sami.

‘Everyone is dead and it’s just us four.’