The Bunker

The bunker's concrete walls were discolored with wet rot and covered with fissures from the shockwaves that had hit it 17 days before. City-killing hydrogen monster bombs converted the globe above into a radioactive inferno on March 6, 2025.

The sky through the breaches was a nightmare of boiling scarlet and orange and a thick, gray veil of fallout with an odd, phosphorescent light. Cesium-137 and strontium-90, which burned lungs and rotted bones, were now in the air. Me, Sarah, Mark, Elena, Tom, and tiny Jake were buried under 12 feet of soil and steel with a failing generator, a crate of canned food, and water that tasted like rust and iodine pills.

The Geiger counter's constant clicking was our lullaby for the first several days, a reminder of the unseen death we'd averted. However, we discovered no escape. Something worse—something the bombs created.

We were initially affected by subtle but deadly nuclear impacts. On day three, my gums bled as I brushed, staining the sink crimson. Elena's hair fell out in clumps, leaving raw, weeping scalp patch, while Jake's fingernails darkened and peeled, revealing painful, gushing skin. Mark termed it radiation illness, even though the counter's readings were barely over 0.1 sieverts, not enough to kill us. He speculated, “Stray gamma rays,” as he pasted lead sheets over the cracks. But then the scratching began—high above, a slow, grating drag over the pavement like claws through ash. Tom claimed it was the wind, a wailing banshee bringing debris, yet the air down here was stagnant, heavy with perspiration, vomit, and a stinging, metallic taste on our tongues.

On day seven, the scratches became rhythmic, like something was cutting its way toward us. The generator flickered, its buzz dying out for seconds, and moist, gurgling whispering began—like voices from radioactive mud. They slithered through the vents, which now emitted a weak greenish mist that burned our eyes and mouth. Mark's meter spiked—0.3 sieverts—then became quiet, as if the radiation was breathing and mocking us. “It’s not just fallout,” he muttered, shaking. Change is happening.”

Nuclear inferno above left its first apparent scar on Day 12. Elena shouted at the hatch wall while replenishing the purifier, her fingers bloated and purple from edema. Burnt blood and sulfur reeked from the concrete's black sheen, which pulsed weakly. It flowed like liquid obsidian and corroded the steel instantaneously where it touched the floor, pitting and peeling. Jake, little and feverish, touched it with a burned hand. He screamed, pulling back fingers that blazed and bubbled, dissolving flesh into a sticky, black liquid that dripped and hissed. The wall pulsed deeply, shaking the bunker, and the Geiger counter screamed—1.2 sieverts every heartbeat—before falling to nothing. Red sky blazed brighter outside, creating jagged shadows through the porthole that didn't match anything human.

By day 15, whispering became words—“Open. Open. Open.”—a guttural clamor from fallout-burned throats reverberating from walls, floors, and pipes that now bled black rot. The hatch shook, its steel distorting under a force that left scorch marks—too-long, too-many-fingered handprints burning with leftover heat. Mark's counter remained dead, but our bodies screamed the truth: Tom's skin washed off in gray chunks, revealing abnormal muscular twitching; Sarah's teeth fell out in crimson clumps while she moaned about “them” watching. A static hum filled the air, as you feel before a storm, and the walls sweated—not water, but a thick, radioactive slime that burnt where it touched us, leaving slightly green welts.

That night, Sarah snapped. After carving 17 jagged scars on the table, her eyes rolled back to reveal only whites veined with black. “They’re already here,” she stammered, her voice deep and wrong. She rushed for the hatch, clawing at the bolts with bloody hands, screaming that we had to let them in. We pulled her back, her flesh soft and tearing, but the hatch answered—a screeching grind like metal melting under a fusion blast. That night, she vanished. She lay in a steaming puddle of black sludge with bone fragments and a glowing tooth, silent. A trail led to the locked hatch, but the steel was warm now, making my skin prickle and peel.

Day 16 took Mark. He was looking out the porthole, where shadows writhed in the scarlet haze—tall, skeleton beings with backward-bending limbs and ash and flames. “The bombs didn’t kill them,” he mumbled, his voice trembling as neck sores appeared. “They made them.” He broke the glass with a wrench, screaming that he'd sooner choke on fallout than face this.

After the porthole broke, a wet, electric miasma of ozone and rot poured in instead of the blazing breeze. Geiger counter jumped to 5 sieverts—lethal in minutes—then flatlined. A face, or what was remained of one, peered through, its skin a transparent membrane over a radiation-warped skull, veins throbbing with a sickening green radiance. Its mouth split into a grin of splintered, glowing teeth, and its eyes—bulging, tumorous orbs—leaked a pus that sizzled on the floor. A claw followed, dripping black rot, and grabbed Mark. His scream cut off as his arm disintegrated into ash, his body collapsing inward like a burned-out husk, pulled through the hole in seconds. The hatch thudded harder, the steel buckling, its surface now etched with cracks that oozed a radiant, toxic slime.

It’s day 17, and I’m all that’s left. Tom fought the walls as they pulsed, swinging a crowbar that sparked against the concrete. He hit something—a tendril of black, writhing filth erupted, wrapping his legs and dragging him under. His flesh melted into the floor, leaving only his eyes, wide and glowing, staring up at me until they sank away. Elena and Jake barricaded themselves in the storage closet, but the door glowed red-hot hours ago, and their screams turned to wet, choking gurgles.

The generator’s dead, the darkness alive with a low, ionizing hum that vibrates in my teeth. The walls are flesh now—warm, slick, rippling with half-formed shapes: hands with too many fingers, faces with mouths that stretch and snap silently, all glowing with the faint blue of Cherenkov radiation. My body’s failing—my hair’s gone, my skin peels in sheets, and my blood feels thick, tingling with something alive. The hatch is melting, dripping molten steel that pools and writhes, forming shapes that crawl toward me. Beyond it, they wait—hulking, irradiated monstrosities, their flesh sloughing off in glowing strips, bones fused with metal shards from the blast, eyes like miniature suns that burn into my soul.

The whispers are my name now, spoken by Sarah, Mark, Elena, Jake—voices warped by nuclear fire, promising not death but a joining. My reflection in the knife shows it: my eyes glow green, my veins pulse black, my skin splits to reveal something beneath, something new. The air crackles with static, and I feel the radiation inside me, rewriting me. The hatch yawns wide, and they reach—claws dripping fallout, bodies trailing ash and light. I don’t know if I’m running or reaching back.