My mother died yesterday...
She's been sick for three months and barely got out of bed.
My death," she said, "is not the worst thing...
What you're going to have to face next is a lot worse than that..."
***
Mom was six months pregnant when Dad brought her here. He ordered her to stay here, no matter what. She never saw him again, and I didn't even have a picture of him. So we lived in this shelter for twenty-five years.
All the living conditions were there: water and food, electricity, air filtration. There was even something to do - a few dozen books.
My mother repeated a thousand times that it was impossible to go to the surface, because it was very dangerous. I learned all her warnings by heart: radiation, bandits, perhaps even zombies.
All these years of loneliness was a terrible curse for us, and now I'm all alone... But that wasn't the worst thing for me...
Spend my whole life underground, grow old and die... To die without taking a chance... To die without seeing the world - that's what I was afraid of the most.
For the last three years, I've been thinking about how to get to the surface, and now that Mom's gone, I've decided it's time.
I took everything I needed with me, and I went to the hatch. Grabbing the lever, I tried to turn it, but it didn't work. I thought... Maybe I should take it as a sign. A clue? To give up this idea?
No," I thought, "and armed with a wrench, I pounded the lever. After several blows, he fell off...
I fell into despair... I'll never get out of here. My home will be my grave...
After taking off my protective gear, I headed for the shower. But in the hallway, I stuck myself on my backpack and fell...
Lying on the floor, I saw the partition from the closet next to me. I was trying to figure out what she was hiding behind me, but the poor lighting made it hard to see anything. A pocket lamp came to my aid, and I saw a big red button with it that said "Exit.
"Will this button open the hatch? - I was thinking. Also, I was worried about why the obviously fake lever that I broke off was attached. Apparently, it was designed to make us feel like we were going to get to the surface, and if we did, we'd lose our hands because of the broken lever. It was like it was some kind of safety net.
But luckily, I found this button. When I counted to three, I pressed it. A siren rang up all over the hideout, and the hatch began to open slowly. It was the first time I was exposed to sunlight. All my life, I had dreamt of seeing him.
So the hatch opened completely. As I climbed the stairs, I began to explore the area. There was nothing special about it but deserted landscapes, and only a long way off was the city, or rather what was left of it. Even from here we could see how badly it had been destroyed. There was literally nothing left of some buildings. Many high-rise buildings were tilted on top of each other and seemed ready to collapse at any moment.
Suddenly, not far from me, right out of the ground, something began to rise. I was afraid, and I jumped back into the shelter. Oh, shit!" I thought, "I didn't know how to close the hatch! With nothing better, I hid in the bedroom under the bed and listened to what was happening on the surface. The noise was a verse...
"What could it have been?" - I was thinking. Maybe it was something from our shelter? I mean, if the hatch was opened, then something was rising to the surface too?
- Svetlana Ivanova! Are you home? - asked for a man's voice.
"Is it really a man? - I asked myself. - Did anyone else survive?
After repeating his question, the un sub went down to the shelter. I had never been so scared before. I cursed myself for daring to come to the surface.
A stranger walked through the shelter and carefully examined it, opening all the doors and looking into every corner. He never met a single living soul and headed to the bedroom. And so, a few centimeters away from my face, there were black shoes, pretty dusty. "At least it was a man, not a monster," I thought, trying to calm myself down.