Author's note:
I hadn't planned on writing a sequel to
The End of the World
, but I got a lot of heartfelt comments and email requests that I not leave things the way they were at the end of that story. Frankly, I felt the same way, so I got to playing around with some ideas. Eventually I developed an outline of something I thought might work, but as I actually wrote it, the story came together in a way that made it, for me, one of the most satisfying tales I've written, in any genre. I hope you like it as well.
Due to where this story necessarily starts, there isn't a whole lot of sex early on, but there's plenty of it later.
While I've done just enough exposition that you could read this piece as a stand-alone, reading even the first paragraph would taint the first story for you if you decided to read it later. I wholeheartedly recommend that you start with
The End of the World
if you haven't already read it.
As a disclaimer, any political, social or religious views in this story are those of the characters and their circumstances, and don't necessarily reflect those of the author.
As always, your comments are highly coveted.
MB
*****
I don't know how long I've been on the cold, hard floor in the pitch black, but it feels like my entire body has assumed the rather chilly room temperature. After shedding more tears than I would have thought possible, my eyes are now dry and burning.
The dust has mostly settled, but I can feel that a lot of it is deep in my lungs. I can no longer fight it, and a coughing fit hijacks control of me. For the next few minutes my body convulses painfully as it attempts to cough up a lung. Mercifully, just as I'm sure it's about to
succeed
, it gives up for now. I'm thoroughly exhausted, and it feels like I must have cracked some ribs, but I somehow continue to breathe.
As little as I like it, I have to conclude that, at least for the moment, I'm still alive. I suppose it's something of a miracle, but frankly, I'd rather be dead. It's not right that I still breathe. Not while millions of people outside these walls are dying today, with maybe billions more to be claimed in the days, weeks and months ahead, victims of a nuclear holocaust that the vast majority of us hadn't seen coming. Dammit, the Cold War had been over for almost thirty years! Why did we have to go and
do
this?
The brutal Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin, once said, "One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic." But even with the tens of millions that he'd had brutally murdered, he was a piker compared to whomever it was that triggered this obscenity. I discover a kernel of truth in his words, though, as I find myself mourning my own losses.
My house, my barn, my garden and my stupid chickens, all of the things I'd worked so hard for and surrounded myself with, have been incinerated. Far worse, the corpse of my cherished sister lies on the scorched ground above me, less than a hundred feet away, her somewhat
less
cherished boyfriend right next to her, both victims of the same fate.
God help me, though, even the loss of the last member of my own family pales in comparison to the death of my beloved, his body crushed and buried not twelve inches from where I lie right now, on the other side of a thick steel blast door.
Romantics might say that we'd lived and loved a lifetime in those few hours that we'd finally been together. It had been half a decade since our careful dance around each other in high school, followed by a nonsensical estrangement over a simple misunderstanding. Then today, when we'd been lured together inside these walls and forced to confront and resolve the issues between us, we'd realized how silly we'd been. And after that, we'd burned like a white-hot flame.
Still, those romantics would be wrong. We'd only had a mere
taste
of that love of a lifetime. We'd both known that as good as it was, (and it had been
good
), it would only get better. But that lifetime has been torn from us.
As the slow, creeping chill sinks further into me, I consider death by hypothermia. I suppose it's as good a death as any, and a whole hell of a lot less painful than what has been on tap for so many today. I was near the man I loved when he died, and now I'll die next to him.
That's probably better than I deserve. If I hadn't raced out of the bunker when I
knew
there was no chance for Crystal and Braylin, Greg and I could have sealed ourselves inside and ridden this out together. We could have at least died in each other's arms in this bunker which, though it hasn't actually collapsed, was obviously under-designed for the magnitude of this catastrophe.
Instead, he'd been forced to drag me back into the bunker, fighting him the whole way. Then he'd felt honor bound to go back out and push the door closed when the handle to
pull
it closed had come off in his hands. A handle which I'd
known
wasn't up to the job, yet hadn't bothered to replace.
I
should have been the one out there, crushed by the blast and then tons of earth and rock when the tunnel collapsed.
But that had been the kind of man Greg was. Strong, kind, intelligent, ridiculously handsome, and willing to give of himself. He'd always been the only man I'd ever wanted, and he'd turned out to be a lover the likes of which I'd never imagined. Then he'd sacrificed his life for me, even knowing the certain and violent death that awaited him.
"Why did you
do
that, Gregory Edwards?" My cry feels dead in this space, and the effort sends me into another fit of excruciating coughing, but just saying the words aloud finally brings me to a realization;
Greg's sacrifice will be meaningless if I just give up and die
. To honor what he did for me, I have to at least
try
.
With a sheer act of will, I stagger to my feet, almost surprised that I'm able to stand, but I guess the heavy blow from the blast door when it was slammed closed by a multi-megaton nuclear blast has probably only left me bruised.
Through my gritty eye slits, I realize that it's not totally dark in the bunker after all. Every ten seconds or so, there's a quick flash from the green LED of the carbon monoxide detector. I know it's mounted to the wall just outside the door to the utility room. Like it or not, it's beckoning me in that direction.
Brushing my hand along the cold steel of the blast door, then the rougher, warmer, painted drywall, I make my way to the utility room. Stepping in, I reach for the flashlight which should be on the shelf next to the door, but it's not there. Considering how badly the bunker has been shaken, I'm not in the least surprised. I carefully get to my knees and begin to feel around. There are any number of unexpected and unidentified objects on the floor now, but I keep at it until I feel a familiar grooved aluminum cylinder.
When I switch it on, I gaze upon chaos. When my father had furnished this military-constructed shell of a bunker, he'd felt he'd fastened things down pretty well, but it obviously hadn't been good enough. The deep shelves of spares and other equipment had been outfitted with tall lips on the fronts to keep things from sliding off, but the shelves themselves have collapsed, spewing their contents everywhere.
The generator has moved a little from its usual location, but its power cord, propane line and exhaust connections are still attached, and may have kept it from marching further across the floor. Thankfully, the monstrous propane tank appears not to have shifted in its sturdy mounts, and the shelf holding the inverter looks to be untouched.
The battery shelves that I installed more recently have done okay, though a couple of batteries have managed to break free of their straps. They're hanging by their thick wires and one of those connections has come off, which alone would be enough to knock out the power. And power is going to be absolutely necessary if I'm going to survive for more than a day or two. It's time to get to work, and this is where I'm going to start.
Three hours later, I've got electricity. The first thing I do is try the radios. Though Greg had disconnected their antennas to protect them from electromagnetic pulse radiation, they're still dead. Perhaps the EMP had been strong enough that anything even
near
