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By Heather Ann Martinez

Four walls. Not much light. Chanse Sylverman called it home. The bunkers were not built for sustaining anyone for very long. Chanse had been living in the bunker longer than most of the others trying to escape radiation burns and inevitable death. The bunkers were starting to deteriorate. They could no longer keep anyone alive and the poisons that were outside were starting to find their way in. The only hope of survival was to move further underground. The major issue with that is that there is no natural light. There is only cold and darkness. Chanse struggled with the idea of leaving the bunker he called his camper. He said it felt more like he was in the bottom bunk of his childhood camper than a bunker underground. Going further into the darkness was not what he or anyone else wanted to do. They knew oxygen would be limited. There wouldn’t be anything green or welcoming. The bunker Chanse lived in was far from anyone else. He would be going alone. Whenever Chanse looked at the prospect, he drew a blank.

For months, he struggled to remember the date. Every day looked the same as the one before. The same four walls stared back at him. Every sound became familiar even if there wasn’t a pattern to them. All he knew was he had escaped sudden death. He had been wealthy and knowledgeable about human made and natural disasters. He didn’t blame anyone for his current circumstances. He had spent most of his adult life preparing for this very possibility. He saved himself. He didn’t know if anyone else he knew had made the same preparations. He regretted not being more like Noah and built an ark. At the time, he thought only of himself. He had just ended a relationship with a woman that he thought shared his passions. It turned out that she was only interested in his money. He told her there was a possibility all of us would have to go underground some day. She laughed when he said that and he resented her for it. He wished he had showed her what all humans were doing to the earth.

In some ways, Chanse built himself a prison or a tomb. He thought someone would resolve the issues on the surface within a few months. They knew, he thought. The scientific community knew. Surely one of them had already been working on a solution. Chanse never expected to be in the bunker all that long. He didn’t realized the magazines and papers he brought to the bunker with him had truly faded and aged with time. Chanse could never tell when one day stopped and another started. He guessed by how tired he was that night had fallen. When he woke up hours later, he assumed seven or eight hours had passed. He conserved food and water. Everyday, he followed the same routine. He was extremely aware of every sound. There was no one to talk with anymore. There was no one to see. There was nothing different about one day in the future versus one in the past. Chanse would ask himself if it was March or if it was December. His eyes had become very sensitive to the light inside the bunker. He began to forget things that were important to him when he was living on the surface. He used to jog on the treadmill of the gym that was on the main level of the building he worked in. He took for granted stuffing an egg sandwich into his mouth while running late to a board meeting. He forgot what it was like to cut himself shaving and getting dressed for a stressful workday. He didn’t miss the endless emails, the phone calls, the people swearing at him and calling him names.

He knew humanity was headed for disaster. He made and executed a plan for the when. He wouldn’t say it was for spiritual reasons. He didn’t believe that God or the universe led him to the bunker. He just knew that human beings were not good at cleaning up after themselves. Now, he knew he had to go deeper underground to save himself. He packed his rations and water and put on a diving suit with an oxygen tank. He wanted to record his adventure but when he looked at the page, it was blank. He thought that emptiness said everything. He couldn’t describe what he was feeling any better. There was a void. He lost hope and found it over and over again. He lost compassion, lost empathy. He did not pass by any strangers on busy city streets. He remembered offering her space under his umbrella in the middle of an unexpected downpour. He remember her perfume, how wet her hair was and how much she looked as if she had jumped into a swimming pool fully dressed. She kept pulling at her coat trying to keep it closed as she shivered. He wanted to comfort her in that moment but they had just met. He didn’t know her name yet. He hadn’t told her all about his plans for the future yet. That came later. He didn’t expect her to leave. He thought she would have put up more of a fight. He never thought she would chime in with the others and call him crazy for building the bunker. Then she did.

The memory of her was intoxicating as Chanse walked cautiously out of the bunker and further underground. He monitored radiation as he walked in the tunnels that he thought led to the earth’s core. The tunnels had been there for thousands of years and he had his bunker placed underground in one of them. Chanse had not heard the voice of another human being for some time until he heard a familiar voice. “Chanse?”

“What are you doing here?”

“Well, I thought you were crazy at the time, but then I thought about it. You were right. I had a team of engineers build me a bunker down here too. I know you didn’t think I was interested in the end of the world as we knew it. The truth is all this scared me. It still does, but I remembered you said we could survive closer to the core if our bunkers became compromised.”

For a moment, Chanse thought she was a figment of his imagination. Then he touched her hand. She was truly there.

“Gracyn, I have never been happier to see you! Let’s keep going.”

He took her hand and they continued walking further underground uncertain of what they would find along the way. What was certain for Chanse was he would never lose hope again. He had Gracyn to remind him of how to find it in the darkness.