The Mistake

The air had turned toxic. The plants and animals had begun to die. The rain had turned acidic. The soil lost its nutrients. Food became scarce. People turned against one another, and the population quickly dwindled. There were some that survived longer than others, less affected by the air’s toxicity.

A man and a woman were walking together, gas masks on their faces, searching among an empty cul de sac for a resting place, as a storm was coming. It had been several years since civilization had collapsed and there had been many scavengers who had picked through the major establishments like shopping malls, grocery stores and a lot of the places in the big cities, but there was the occasional house away from the city that hadn’t been picked through.

As they made their way through the houses, they came across one that had enough canned food for the two of them to survive the night. There were old family photos whose glass was broken, exposing and withering the photos until they were indistinguishable. Furniture had been broken and stained, knocked over from previous survivors. The windows were cracked and the wallpaper was peeling in several places, but it was enough to keep them out of the storm. There were stairs that led to the upper floor, several broken stairs to accompany the broken stair railing.

The man began to search the upstairs and the woman searched the downstairs. She found a few cans of food, peaches and green beans. It wasn't much but it would be enough to sustain them for the day, after a day of walking. She called for the man who came downstairs holding a piece of cloth, grinning from ear to ear. He handed the woman the cloth, which she unfolded to reveal a beautiful blue floor-length dress. He then handed her a small, golden heart-shaped locket. "What's all this?" she asked.

"I found these upstairs. It's amazing that no one found them. I thought they would look beautiful on you," he said, words muffled by the gas mask. He looked like he had an idea in mind. "Put those on. I'll be right back." He disappeared upstairs again.

She shrugged but did as he asked, gratefully stripping herself of her dirty clothes and replacing them with the dress. She slipped the necklace over her head as the man came back downstairs again wearing a smart-looking suit. It was apparent he had run a brush through his hair.

He walked up to her, grinning. He held out her hand, offering her a dance. She took it gladly, his hand warm in her chilly one, and he gently pulled her close, causing the two of them to giggle. She rested her head on his shoulder and could hear the steady, rhythmic beating of his heart. He set his cheek on her hair. They began to sway back and forth as she began to hum the melody to a song she knew in her youth.

As they danced, there was a sudden crackle of static as a CB radio, that had previously been silent, came to life. They both stopped and turned to look at it.

"Hello? Hello? Is there anyone else out there?" Asked the voice from the radio. It was a male voice, sounding desperate.

They looked from the radio to each other and back. They had thought they were alone, as they had been for years.

The man lunged for the radio, picking up the receiver. "Hello?! This is John. Please tell me there are more survivors."

There was a long moment of static. "John?" The voice sounded strained. "My name is Donny. We have found a safe-haven, a bunker underground. There is a city of people here. We can give you shelter and food."

John looked at his wife. She had the look of hopefulness in her eyes. "It's me and my wife, Kate," he said into the radio.

A pause. "The more the merrier. I can give you the coordinates and you can join us."

They received the coordinates and finished the conversation with the Mysterious Donny. John turned to Kate. "What do you think?"

Kate, her eyes alight with hope, said, "It doesn't hurt to give it a try."

His heart broke at the thought of telling her no. He looked at his wife, beautiful in a stranger's clothes. "Of course dear. We should pack up and look for a map." They packed up what little possessions they had and set out to look for a map to follow.

After finding a map they planned the route to take before looking for a car they might be able to use. After searching the area for a working car, they found, with luck, a car with a quarter tank of gas and only one flat tire. John had managed to find a spare and, after changing the tires out, John hot-wired the car, and they set out on their journey.

They managed to get pretty far with the little gas that was in the tank. Traveling went a lot faster now that there wasn't any traffic anymore, save for the broken bodies of vehicles no longer able to move, or whose owners didn't come back for them. They nearly made it most of. the way to the safehouse, only needing to go a few more miles on foot.

They knew immediately when they got there. Donny had told them the bunker was located in a parking garage basement. He and his party had sealed it up and converted it into a bunker, making homes for its occupants. The entryway was through the stairwell, all the way to the bottom.

As they made their way down, it got darker, only a row of dim solar-powered lanterns to light the way. John went first, Kate at his elbow. There was a large set of double doors at the end of a short corridor. John went over and tried the doors. They were locked. John looked at Kate before knocking loudly. They waited. There was only silence for a moment.

Then there was the sound of a door opening, and slowly the double doors in front of them opened. A small man with long, graying scraggly hair and beard. He looked pleased to see them. He smiled and a few of his teeth were gone. His eyes were small and beady, like a rodent’s. He beckoned them to follow him.

John looked uneasily at Kate, before the two of them went forward into the doors. They found a dingy gray room with another door that led into the actual bunker area.

Once they got inside it took a moment for their eyes to adjust to the darkness. There weren't any windows, with it being a basement, and the stairwell entrances were blocked off with heavy-looking pieces of metal that blocked off any light that might have come through. There were rows of small houses, more like shacks, that people were coming out of, that, assumedly, were their homes.

The people looked friendly enough and not at all like Donny, who looked rough around the edges. The others were well-dressed (as much as they could be during the apocalypse), and the townsfolk were gaping at John and Kate curiously. The feeling was mutual.

Donny led them to a shabby looking shack that was a bit bigger than the others. Donny walked inside and they followed. The inside was a reflection of the outside, old and worn down, with little furniture and the strong smell of cats, though Kate guessed that there hadn't been any cats living there for a few years.

Kate kept close to John, not willing to trust this man. There was something about him that gave her a bad feeling. She leaned in to John and whispered, "I've got a bad feeling about this."

John looked at her incredulously. "We don't have any other choice now," he whispered back quickly.

"I'm so glad you chose to come here. We've been recruiting new people to join our bunker for the last couple of years. Not everyone stays," he said, a glint in his eye. "We started this shortly after the world went wrong."

John and Kate looked at one another. There were a lot of people who had been watching them, but it was nothing if they had been collecting people over the last few years. There couldn't have been more than 30 people in the whole "town". Where were the others?

They were shown to their shack and began to settle in. It was small but cozier than they had had to deal with on their travels, where the houses were usually in some state of ruin. Donny had followed them to their house and turned to look at John.

“Mind if I have a word with you?” Donny asked.

John looked at Kate, unsure whether he should go or not. “Of course,” he said, following Donny back out of the house.

Kate watched them go out of the window. She looked around the town at the inhabitants and it noticed something strange. All of the townspeople were women, carting the children (who were also all girls) from one of the shacks to another. Kate decided to walk around, taking in more of the bunker. She continued to notice that it was only women around the town.

She was about to ask one of them about where the men were when she heard someone cry out. She turned to look in the direction of the scream and found John. He was clutching his chest and Kate could see blood spilling out from between his fingers. “RUN!” he shouted, coughing. He was staggering.

Kate saw Donny was right behind John and against her instincts to help her husband, she ran as fast as she could for the door that they had come through. There was a stitch in her chest but she pushed past it. Several of the women stopped and watched as Kate hurled herself through the door that they had come through, through the double doors, and back up the stairwell. She could hear John’s screams and the shouts of some of the women in the camp. They were calling her back.

When she made it back up to the parking garage, she ran away as fast as her legs would take her, unable to fully process what she had seen in the bunker. When she reached outside, she continued to run until her legs gave out. She collapsed on the ground after she was sure no one was following her. Tears streamed from her eyes as she thought of what she had done. She left her husband to die. After a long moment of mourning, she thought of how stupid she was to convince John to go there. She knew he didn’t want to, but agreed because of her.

She sat there and cried for a long time before she did the only thing she knew she could do. She dusted herself off, clutched the golden locket at her throat, the last gift John had given her, and began walking numbly into the night, searching for an abandoned house for her to stay in for the night.