“Are you okay?” I hear Zavy ask, but the laughter in her voice tells me she isn’t all that concerned.
“Yeah I’m fine,” I groan out. I roll on my back and sit up to see what my foot had gotten caught on. Peeking up out of the light dirt is a thick metal ring. I squint, examining its muted silver surface. I move onto my knees and start cleaning the dirt off around it.
“Zavy, come look at this,” I call over to her. She appears over my shoulder and I show her the metal disk that was hidden beneath the dirt. It’s fairly large, about two feet across. “What do you think it is?” I ask and look up to her. The wicked grin on her face tells me she knows exactly what I’ve just found.
Zavy kneels beside me and loops her hand through the metal ring, “It’s a bunker,” she says and pulls up on the disk. Slowly the metal disk hinges up, exposing a dark hole.
“A bunker? Like from the showers?” I ask, referencing the asteroid shower that ended the world before ours.
“I’ve been out here for years and I’ve never found one,” Zavy says, still taking in our discovery. “It has to be like a hundred years old.”
We’re quiet for a moment until Zavy looks up to me. “I’m not going down there,” I start to say defensively.
“This is the perfect shelter,” she cuts me off. “I’ll go down first and check it out.”
“Zavy be careful,” I start, but she has already lowered herself on to the ladder of the bunker.
“What do you see?” I holler down and her face swims back into view as she climbs up.
“Nothing, I need some light.” She crawls out of the hole and moves to the pile of sticks I had dropped when I fell. She opens the bag she had been carrying over her shoulder and pulls out a line of dirty white cloth. She takes leaves, wraps them in the cloth, and then wraps the cloth around the sticks.
“What are you doing?” I ask and watch her pull out a large knife and piece of metal.
“Making a torch,” she says as she strikes the metal with her knife. Sparks shower from the metal and onto the cloth until it finally catches and an orange flame engulfs the torch. “Hand it to me,” she says and crawls back down the ladder. I see her tan hand peek up in the light and I hand down the firing torch.
“Adaline, come down,” Zavy’s voice echoes up to me. The narrow and dark stone hole makes my stomach turn. I have to remind myself it’s not a prison cell. Eventually, curiosity takes over and I climb down the dirty cool rungs of the ladder. My feet hit the stone floor and I spin around and take in the glowing room.
I breathe in sharp, taking in the space. It’s a square concrete block with a low roof. It looks as though it was never even touched. It does resemble a large cell and I have to keep my heart calm. Out of instinct, I catch myself glancing back toward the ladder to make sure I still have a way to get out.
We dig through the room, taking a mental inventory of what we find. Along the wall to our left are cabinets full of grey slick bags. I pull one from the cabinet and the word BACON is printed on it. I rip open the bag and my nose is filled with a smoky scent. They’re food packages. I scan the cabinet and see that there are enough to last for years.
My stomach has been begging for more food since this morning. I pour the bag’s contents out on my hand and find that it’s a clumped together white powder. I place it on my tongue and as the powder dissolves a smoky meat flavor takes its place.
“What did you find?” Zavy asks, coming up to my side.
“Try this,” I say and offer her some of the powder food.
“Oh, that’s pretty good,” Zavy offers. “The texture is horrible though,” she adds and I agree.
“There’s enough here to feed us for years,” I add showing her the cabinets full of the grey bags.
We continue to search the room while eating some of the food rations. On the back wall there are four beds with thick blankets. On the other side are two couches facing each other and a couple of extra chairs. There are a lot of things I’ve only seen in books or heard about in stories; a television, lamps, cooking machines, and clothes I would never imagine seeing my mother tailor.
I let my hand rest on the glossy black television and I remember just yesterday Titus had said he wanted one. Just yesterday I had told him they don’t even exist anymore. Tears well in my eyes at the thought that if he had made it out he would have actually gotten to see one in person and not just in the old school book we read.
“They really thought they’d have electricity during an asteroid shower?” Zavy scoffs, dusting off one of the side lamps.
“How do you prepare for something you don’t know anything about,” I mumble, trying to understand what these people must have been thinking. “It doesn’t even look like anyone lived here.”
“They must not have made it before the shower started,” Zavy says and I think it must be awful to spend your time organizing this space to be dead before you could even use it.
Hand-woven rugs are placed around the bunker as well, trying to soften up the stone space. Zavy and I dig through the
