Monday, 19 December 2011

The Underground

The world is a dangerous place.
No one knows who started it or how it really happened but the world has been converted into a desolate wasteland. The world up top is filled with chemicals, radiation and god knows what else.
People have resorted to living in underground tunnels under whats left of the cities, its not much safer down here. In desperate times, everyone turns to their dark side to survive, It's human nature.


























Since the apocalypse happened almost all of the wildlife has died, but a lot of the insects survived and mutated, that is just one of the dangers in the tunnels that survivors have to face every day. There are also bandits to worry about, food being scarce anyone you meet could turn on you out of sheer hunger or temptation. 
But one of the most dangerous things is the darkness. Underground there is no sunlight, most of the lighting in the tunnels lacks power or is simply broken. Any form of fires results in smoke and you never know whats flammable and what is not, so a torch is out of the question. So relying on flashlights is a must. If you're lucky you have a wind-up flashlight, otherwise you have to make sure to have enough batteries.
















Small settlements form anywhere there is a generator, people gather for a more permanent light and its the only place where you can get charged batteries. But if you come from the outside, they are just as likely to just take everything that you have as they are to trade with you.


I am lying in a room getting some sleep next to a bunch of old junk.
It's hard to find time to get some rest and with no sense of time, you can never tell when you were last resting. I am dreaming of what the world used to be like, before all of this happened. I can barely remember it anymore.













Suddenly I get woken up by a loud 'smack!' 
"Get Up! Get Up!" a familiar female voice shouts
I open my eyes and on my leg there is a grey spider and I can hear a buzzing sound. I suddenly realize what is going on and I see my companion Sarah with a metal pipe in her hands swinging after the spiders.

"Come on hurry up!" she shouts
I grab my flashlight and smack it into the spider on my leg, it lands a few feet away and aggravated it gets up and start running back at me.
Suddenly the buzzing gets louder and the spiders stop for a moment as if they are listening. Moments later they scatter and disappear.




I look over at Sarah she is panting and smiles at me, suddenly as a 
figure start appearing behind her I realize what the buzzing is.
A bloodfly.
I jump to my feet and I push her out of the way as the bloodfly moves to strike with its tail from behind her. It notices me and spits into my eyes and I tumble backwards and drop my flashlight.
I still hear the buzzing even though I can't see and I wonder "is this the end". Then I hear a loud smack and another and another, it keeps going and goes over to a metallic sound. As it stops I hear Sarah's voice,
"Urgh, stupid Bloodflies! I hate them." she shouted and turned to me "Hey, are you okay?"
"I can't see, it spit me in the eyes" I replied
"Let me see"
I can feel her grabbing my head and I can see a light shining.
"It didn't hit you right on, you should be fine in half an hour or so, just don't touch it," she said concerned
"Okay.. what now?"
"We can't stay here, all that noise and the smell of the carcass is probably going to draw the spiders back soon."
"Any suggestions?"
"I found a new tunnel when I was out, I think it will lead us on."
"Okay lets go."
She takes my hand and puts it up on her shoulder and we start moving. We walk for what must be hours, through tunnels, up stairs, down ladders. As we keep moving I slowly start regaining my vision, witch makes moving around much easier.


The tunnels are long and dark you could easily get lost down here, but to be lost you would need a place to be from.. or a place you were heading to.. we have neither.
Stay on the move.
Stay Alive.
Nothing else matters anymore.


We stop for a while to eat and rest our legs and as Sarah start looking in our packs for some food I look around a bit.
Around the next corner I see a big machine, I get curious about it and I go in for a closer look.
It appears to be an engine of some sort and just as I was going to go call Sarah over I see her standing over by a panel on the other side of the machine. 






She looks over at me 
"watch this," she said and smiled
She flips a switch on the board and the large engine turn a few times and then it starts. The lights all through the corridor start to slowly glow before they turn up completely.

The tunnel we are standing in is now well lit and we can see that it stretches far far away in both direction.
I turn off my flashlight and smile at Sarah. 
"Nice job!" I proclaimed.
It had been days, maybe weeks since we saw proper light the last time, the flashlights had been our only light.. a small beacon of hope.





We heard voices further down the tunnel  I looked over at Sarah and she nodded her head over to move towards the voices. We quickly packed our things and started moving quietly down the tunnel.
As we came closer we could tell that it was a bigger group of people and they seemed to be looking for someone. By the sound of it.. Whoever it was, they would probably not be coming out of it alive.

Suddenly I hear someone whisper from the side of the tunnel.
"Hey, over here!"
We look over in one of the sides of the tunnel there is a boy hiding.
"Please! you have to help us,"  he cries out "they are going to kill us!"
I look over at Sarah, she shrugs, up to me then I guess.
"come on," I said to him.
I held out my hand and as he grabbed it he signaled with the other hand for someone to come out. Out from behind a crack in the wall comes two girls and another boy. I looked shocked but I looked over at Sarah and she had already started moving back down the tunnel.
"Come on," she whispered.
Too late to turn back now, we move into a side tunnel with Sarah in the lead, the kids and then me in the back. I probably looked over my shoulder more than I did in front of us. We kept moving down the tunnel and the lights went dark again, we pulled out our flashlights and kept moving.
I could barely hear the voices behind us anymore, I don't think they followed us down the tunnel. We came upon some stairs and started moving up them, at the top of the stairs there was a closed door.
As she began to open the door I just got a feeling that something was very wrong on the other side of that door. I tried to move up to stop her but before I got there something leaped out with a high pitched skree. 

I looked back and it had jumped on top of the boy and the others were running down the stairs screaming. Just moments later it moved off the boy and the boy sat up with the same bleak face and dead eyes. 
He made a loud skree and I pushed Sarah through the now wide open door  and I slammed the door shut behind us.

It was dark in there and we could hear screaming over the sound of the monsters skree. What have we done I thought to myself.
On the other side of the door one of the monsters were banging and scratching the door to get through.
It was dark, we had dropped the flashlights on the other side of the door. 
Sarah fell to her knees and started crying, I sat down and held her as we waited in the dark for our inevitable fate. We heard another skree, this time, from our side of the door......

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