The boy awoke brimming with energy. As he leapt out of his bunk bed, and his feet impacted the cold metal of the bunker floor, he hit his head on the bunk above. Shaken, but otherwise unbothered, he skipped through the dimly lit room, passing by empty bunk after empty bunk. He made his way to the entrance. The drab, industrious interior did not appeal to the boy, nor anyone with functioning sight, but within the stewart metallic walls laid the hope of a people.

  The door to the outside was not so wide or tall as it was thick. Such construction rendered it incredibly heavy, so hydraulics were in place to facilitate its moving. Testing these mechanisms was one of the many tasks of the boy, which he obediently completed daily.

  With the press of a button the door slid open, rolling off to the side. The sun’s rays cascaded within the shelter, and its sole occupant happily wandered into the daylight. A road that was once well traveled led off into the distance, flanked by tall trees most of the way. Birds played in the flower bushes and a cool breeze dampened what would otherwise be a hot day.

  He skipped on this path for a short distance before turning off and proceeding up a nearby hill. At the top of it was a pavilion with a pair of high-powered binoculars bolted to the ground. From this lookout point, the boy could see the mountains in the distance, as well as the river he played in when he was far younger. Neither of these interested him now. He focused on the roads. A collection of key intersections allowed someone to quickly grasp all the traffic in the area. He observed once more that there was none.

  The task complete, he jogged back to the shelter, along the way checking to ensure the radio he kept on his person was still on and functioning. The entrance was closed behind him, and he proceeded down the hall to the lunchroom. It was simply overstocked, absolutely flooded with all kinds of food. The boy ate only what did not need cooking and rushed to the lab.

  One of the largest rooms in the bunker, it was packed with complex machines and blinking electronics, many of which were half-constructed or in a worse state. There were many workbenches in the room, all but one of which was cluttered and used as additional storage. The center of the room was dominated by a large structure shaped in an arch. Built on top of a platform, all of the wires from the various machines eventually made their way back to it.

  Construction was slow the last few weeks. The boy had finished up any work meant for him long ago, and now he remained picking up work meant for other professionals. His genius mind persisted, hacking away at progress by referencing technical books from the storage. Today he was concerned with fabricating the various electronic components that would go in the final machine, as well as the arch itself.

  He slaved away. The minutes blended into hours until he was too tired to work. While returning to his bed, a red switch on the wall just outside the lab caught his gaze and held it. The switch would reroute power away from the rest of the shelter, cutting off everything but the lab and the generator room. There were many circumstances that would require its use, all of which unsettled the boy.

  Once back in his bed, he held the radio to his chest, and sleep came for him quickly.

  -----

  The next day began with another leap out of bed. The journey to the lookout point proved uneventful. Gazing through the binoculars, no travelers could be seen. The radio remained silent. But one major thing changed. Off in the distance, visible only through the binoculars, the sky was tainted orange. This was no sunset nor sunrise, and its appearance was not beautiful but rather horrifying.

  The boy considered the sky only for a moment, before double checking that no travelers were on their way. That was the first time he had done so since arriving in the shelter. His mind spun with possibilities and nightmares. Thankfully, working in the lab helped him hide from both.

  While testing, a machine spit fire and melted its own insides. The boy hardly panicked, instead swiftly dosing the flame. Only after the situation was controlled did he let his anger flare. He hurled his wrench across the room and pounded his first on the workbench. The melted machine was arguably farthest from his expertise. Him having to work on it at all could only be described as unfair. Yet time pressed him. The odds that an expert in that research subject would make his way to the bunker was always uncertain. Now it was unlikely. And the odds that the expert would show up in condition to get work done? Even farther.

  The only certainty was that the boy had a chance to get the machine working. This he knew. He recovered a journal cast aside days prior and redid his calculations. Changes were made, and the same machine rebuilt. Testing would resume tomorrow

  Clutching the radio to his heart, he returned to rest. Worries threatened him, but still were unable to stop his drift into slumber

  -----

  Rising on the third day, he began to dread what he would see. His footsteps were heavier as they found their way to the lookout point. Hope remained within him, but now had the company of an unsightly foe.

  On the path to the lookout tower the boy witnessed all sorts of animals in quantities he never could have imagined. Bears and deer alike trotted side by side as they ran from the oncoming disaster. Tired and hungry, their limbs slow moving and burdened by lack of rest or sleep. Yet survival instinct drove them forward. The panicked birds above had a better lot in this, at least when the toxic air did not drop them dead out of the sky. Some still played carelessly, chasing each other in the air and chirping songs as they did so.

  Across all levels of the food chain, it was an astounding struggle for life. All of it equally futile. No crack in this ground would be spared. No cave, valley, or crevasse deep enough to hide away from the oncoming end.

  The boy readjusted the binoculars, which had been hit by debris and knocked out of setting. Day by day, the wind picked up. But nothing the wind blew posed a threat to the boy, not yet at least.

  Peering through the looking glass, he was drawn from something aside from his objective. The mountains. Just beyond them was a wall of fire unlike anything he had ever seen or imagined. The lip of ultimate destruction was just beginning to be glimpsed. It rose defiantly above the mountain peaks, and blocked the sun, which otherwise would be casting its rays over the valleys and foothills below. Instead they glowed brightly from a new, sinister source of light.

  The boy checked the common pathways to the shelter. Not a soul. Then he checked again, and again, and again. He readjusted the radio and ensured it was well charged and functioning; it was listening for signals across the entire spectrum of possible communications. As a last measure, he used the binoculars. He confirmed, certain beyond certain, what he saw: nothing. Empty paths. But paths still intact. Still able to be traveled.

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  There were many blind spots that the boy could not see, same in number as the hills in the valley. The boy could have stood there all day looking for a sign, or at least until the wind rose to flay the flesh from his bones, the fumes melted his lungs, and the cracks in the scarred earth opened up to swallow him. Such nightmares were still exactly that–nightmares. Only in the land of the boy’s imagination would they show.

  None of the animals attempted to rush inside the shelter when the boy entered. They must have all surmised that he was doomed.

  He returned to the same lab as always, now with one additional layer of dust on everything aside from this workbench and the scorched machine. Today they would battle again. The scorched machine managed an overwhelming victory, failing in the first round of testing. The PCB boards inside melted like grilled cheese. Defeated again, he grabbed the same journal from the previous day and crossed out pages of notes and theories. While the new boards were printed, he put the finishing touches on the remainder of the machines, as well as the arch itself. Of course, all the machines were required together for any effect to be had.

  As he returned to his bed, his footsteps echoed across the rows of the empty bunks that extended into the darkness. There were four more rooms just like this one.

  The commotion outside had risen to a level that was finally audible within the bunker, but just barely. Still a faint reminder was all he needed for his fears to accost him as he attempted to sleep. Nightmares visited him again and again. Each time he awoke screaming, usually articulating someone’s name. It drove him to clutch the radio tighter and tighter. After hours of torture, exhaustion forced him to sleep.

  -----

  The boy awoke with a clouded mind on the fourth day. Somehow the events seemed dreamlike. In this trance he sauntered to the door and opened the main entrance. The sounds of bones snapping, flesh ripping, and blood pouring jolted him back to reality. And good that it did. The boy quickly realized how necessary proper protection was, and grabbed a gasmask as well as a thick duster jacket.

  He inspected the situation outside. A moose, desperate for any kind of shelter, had wedged itself in the small inlet that the shelter entrance provided, then succumbed to fate. When the door was opened, the industrial mechanisms outside butchered the corpse into a mound of flesh unrecognizable. The resulting lake of blood besieged the bunker entrance, and the boy had no choice but to walk through it.

  The greater outdoors was faring just as poorly. The path to the shelter entrance was littered with dead birds and small mammals like cigarette buds littering a city walkway. The heat was fantastical. All the surrounding trees lacked all their leaves and occasionally burst into flames. Sometimes the source of the fire was indiscernible, other times it was the lightning which cracked and exploded great oaks with ease.

  The vicious wind was tireless. It threatened flames every step he walked. Halfway to the lookout point, after he thought he was desensitized to the dead animals he witnessed, the boy watched as a group of dead sheep blew past him, rolling like tumbleweeds. The shock reminded the boy how light headed he was getting, and he hastened his pace to the lookout point.

  Thankfully he did not have to travel the full distance. Even from afar, he could see flames billowing out of the wooden structure. With nothing else to do he fingered the radio in his pocket, feeling each button and recalling the current settings by memory. No communication was received. The return trip remained harrowing, but uneventful.One more wade through a pool of blood brought him back inside. The boy knew that he would never go through this doorway again.

  The scorched machine awaited him in the lab, along with a tarnished journal scrawled with mistakes. After setting the radio on a nearby surface, the boy worked once more at getting the machines to work in harmony. The new boards from yesterday had finished printing, and slotted faithfully into place. Initial testing was promising, As per specification, the power level was initially set to 5%, and allowed to remain there for a day. Thereafter power could be increased slowly.

  Even setting the initial level of power was rather burdensome for the boy. He ran back and forth between humming machines adjusting dials slowly upward as he emulated what an entire team was meant for.

  The arch awoke not with roar, but with a cough, as crackling electricity suddenly jumped within it. A few more explosions of electricity intermittently broke the silence. Witnessing these eruptions, the boy determined which dials to adjust. This brought the arch a more stable state, with a consistent bolt of electricity maintained under it.

  As he sat and witnessed his good work, he noted the vibrations in the ground. They were not coming from the arch, but from the core of this dying world. Time was running out. He squeezed the radio, but no connections rang through.

  Any hope of sleep was a wild fantasy. He simply laid in bed, as the rumbling grew. From the bunkroom, which was near the entrance, he could hear the ripping wind through all 2 feet of the metal door. And yet this prompted no action from him. Disconnected, he started at the bunk above him.

  An hour passed, the rumbling grew. Then hours. At last a proper quake shook the lights of the bunkroom and knocked items off of nearby shelves. The bunks that were bolted to the wall wailed as the metal bent. The bedabove the boy gave an inch threatening to flatten him. It was not much, but it snapped him out of the trance he was in.

  With exhaustingly heavy feet, he dragged himself back to the lab. At last the moment he had been dreading arrived. He stood before the red switch. Pulling this would direct power away from the rest of the shelter and direct it to the lab specifically. Pulling this would give the boy the only chance he would get. Pulling this…

  would mean the entrance to the bunker would never open again.

  Not that it really mattered. The outside was inhospitable to any kind of life. It had been for hours. He put his hand on the switch. His stomach twisted as his heart threatened murder. The switch moved as the tears welled in his eyes. With a final push, the trigger was flipped. He broke out into a cold sweat and shivers cascaded across his body. The anger within him built until he hurled his radio at the metal wall with enough force to shatter it.

  The ventilation system slowly suffocated, and all lights died, aside from the glow of the lab. There was work to be done.

  The arc of lighting from before faithfully remained in the arch, but much more was needed than that. The boys practiced hands darted across the control board, adjusting knobs and dials and only occasionally halting to wipe the flooding from his eyes. More lighting dashed around within the arch, but it still sputtered and coughted like a sickly old man.

  A quake rocked the lab. Wires burst from their mountings in a cacophony of crackling. The scorched machine ignited once more, but continued to function. There was no time to print new boards now. Even the shelter was not invincible.

  The boy desperately readjusted the dials to account for the multiple failing machines, and by a stroke of insane luck the portal held, its blue hue calmly illuminating the room. And then the coughing and stuttering resumed.

  The perfect storm occurred once, and it would occur again. The boy ran to the scorched machine which was proudly presenting flames to the world. He grabbed a switch that was not melted and flipped it to it’s maximum setting. The scorched machine exploded, and all the hairs on the boy's arm were seared off as he was blasted back across the room. However after the dust cleared, even through the flames, the machine functioned, just for a bit longer.

  He stood in front of the arch, sure death awaited him if he mistimed this. The blaring of alarms deafened him, as quakes continued to shake the room. But he remained, stressed and out of tears to cry, absolutely confident in the task laid out before him. Once again, the portal stabilized. There was no time to think about it. He jumped through.

  The other side of the portal was contained within a large, dome-topped room. Several hallways spun off to unknown destinations. It lacked any decorations, and like all things uninhabited, it was dark and lonely. The rooms built to house thousands contained only the echoes of pitiful cries from a young boy, who had no choice but to enter alone.