The Silent Death: Part One

It's been ten years since my husband died, yet it still feels like yesterday. Kids today have no idea how much has changed in the last ten years. I see it everyday in my daughter. She's so young and free. She has no idea what kind of freedoms we used to have. No clue what she's missed out on.

If only we had started our family sooner, gotten married sooner, met each other sooner, we could've had more time. Abby would've met her father.

Abby ran into my bedroom, as she does every morning. "Mom! I'm hungry! Can we have pancakes today?" Pancakes were her father's favorite too.

"Not today babe, you have to go to school in 20 minutes! How about a quick bowl of oatmeal?"

"Ughhh, I always have oatmeal. I want something different."

"You know we don't have that many options. But I promise tomorrow we can get up early and make pancakes, okay?"

"You really promise?" She looked right into my eyes, as if daring me to make the promise legitimate.

"Yes, I promise." I smiled at her hoping to get a smile back. After a few seconds it worked and off she ran to the kitchen to get herself some oatmeal.

I walked Abby to school on my way to work. We followed the tunnels to the large school cavern and said our goodbyes. She barely noticed when I went to leave because she'd run right up to her two friends. I was so happy that she made friends easily here. There weren't a lot of other children around, so it was important to me that she had a few good friends.

I rounded the corner and hopped on the moving sidewalk to be sure to get to work on time. Sometimes I took my time and walked next to the sidewalk so I could stop at the little coffee cart along the way, but today I was running late and had to get my small black coffee from the office coffee maker. That was one luxury I was happy we hadn't lost in the Move. Coffee.

I worked in the Lab. Many other people worked there with me, most of us had people we'd lost as well in the Event. It helped motivate us. However, to be fair, there weren't many people around who hadn't lost someone in the Event. Our population was nearly cut in half when the first Event happened.

"Good morning!" Carla waved at me from the next row over. I walked over to see how she was doing. Carla had become one of my closest friends. Her daughter Shane was one of Abby's good friends. Carla had three children, but her oldest son didn't make it to the Move. Now it was just her, Shane, and Danny the youngest. Carla had divorced her husband a few years before the Event and they weren't ever able to connect afterwards so she took care of both kids on her own. We spent many nights at each other's caverns trying to keep each other sane. Single parenting is not easy, but single parenting after the Event became the norm.

"Good morning Carla! How'd your night go last night?" I sat down next to her at my desk and took a sip of the coffee she'd left for me.

"Oh you know, the usual. Danny woke up twice with his usual nightmare of the caverns collapsing and Shane somehow managed to sleep straight through them both! I wish I could sleep with those earbuds in my ears like she does!"

I chuckled a little. "Abby's the same way. She always has those things in! Is Danny okay?"

"For now. I just wish I knew how to help him get over this fear. It's not like we had the same problem when we were growing up. Ahh to remember the smell of fresh air and the look of the stars in the sky late at night. It's hard to realize that was already ten years ago!" Carla looked up at the ceiling of the cavern trying to remember what stars looked like.

"I know exactly how you feel. I'm hoping we'll finally have a breakthrough here soon! I just want Abby to experience that. I never would've imagined life would turn out like this." I sighed and looked at my computer screen, dreading turning it on to see the overflow of emails I needed to get through.

Suddenly the boss came on the intercom: "Attention scientists! Remember, there's an important meeting in the auditorium at 900 sharp! Don't be late! This should be good!" The voice was so loud it echoed three times after the intercom stopped, 'be good... be good... be good...' I really hoped he was right.

900 sharp and we all filed into the auditorium. The screen was set up with the boss' smiling face. "Welcome everyone! Please hurry and find your seats!"

I found mine next to Carla and whispered to her, "Do you think this is finally it?"

"I have no idea, but I like to stay positive." Carla was always so positive. I don't know how she did it. I knew how hard it was for me to lose my husband, but she lost a child. I had no idea how she even had the strength to get up each morning and keep going.

"Today is the day! The day you've all been waiting for. Today we learned what caused the Silent Death..."

The room was silent. No one used those words anymore because they were too painful, but that's the real name for the Event. We all sat on the edge of our seats staring at the screen, eager to learn more. What caused it? How do we stop it from happening again? Will we get to go back to the surface?

"After many years of studying and sending many drones and robots to the surface to gather data, we've learned that..."

The room suddenly went dark. All lights were out, and underground that means no one can see an inch in front of their face. We all reached for our back up flashlights in our pockets to try to illuminate the auditorium a bit, and that's when the alarm sounded.

It had been almost two years since the alarm had sounded. We really hoped that meant it wouldn't sound again, but it turned out we were wrong. Panic struck the Lab and everyone rushed out of the auditorium to the shelter. As I passed my desk, I noticed that my computer had shut off too, even though I left it on. That wasn't good. We may have just lost our electricity and who knew how long all of our flashlight batteries would last.

The moving sidewalks were turned off as well so I couldn't rush to the school to grab Abby like I had done in the past. I had to hope that all of our conversations had prepared her for this and that she knew to grab her back up flashlight and hide in the shelter at school.

The shelters were even further underground than our living level. We had to get as deep as we could so the Silent Death couldn't get to us. And just pray we were deep enough to stay alive.

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