Hazel eyes stared out of a dusty window, looking out over a landscape that brought melancholy to the heart, a broken and shattered remnant of a once-habitable whole. They stared on into the distance, tracking the ash as it fell, the flakes of greys sluggishly descending as though in molasses.
The scene was swathed in shades of grey, decaying yellows, and murky browns, hues melded together in a final testament to the world they had inherited. Dull colours and jagged shapes told tales of a civilisation once mighty, but were now buried and choked under layer upon layer of smoky grey flakes, drowning in cold, chilling air under a sunless sky. Everything was deadly silent and deadly still; nothing lived, nothing moved, except the ash.
It fell endlessly.
The eyes withdrew from the window, the person they inhabited retreating inside the low, pyramidal shape of the bunker that had sustained him for so long. It resembled no more than a mound, so deep was the ash coating it. It was hard to see anything out of the windows, mounds of ash piled up against them, and the lighting in the above-ground levels had broken down some time before. The man with the hazel eyes didn't care for either problem; he had remained below ground for longer than he wanted to remember, and the power still worked down there. If it hadn't, he would have perished long ago, cold and alone in a nightmare he still had trouble believing.
This thought lingered in his head for a few minutes; the underground generator, although reliable, had broken down a few times in the past, necessitating hasty repairs before his untimely death. Were his attempts at survival even worth it? He hadn't been in contact with anyone since…
A sudden flash and thunderous crack jogged him out of his reverie. Running a hand through his dirty blond hair, he strode over to the window again, eyes peering out at the ever-dark sky. There was another sharp flash, forked lightning stabbing down at the horizon from the dark clouds, and a rumble assaulted his ears, louder than any natural thunderstorm he had witnessed. A young voice spoke, its tone tinged with sombreness.
"Ash thunder…"
He exhaled sharply in frustration. Ash thunder was generated in the same way as a thunderstorm; friction between the individual pieces of water in the clouds generated immense static charges. The difference was that this ash could generate far higher charges, resulting in lightning more powerful and more dangerous than a normal thunderstorm. They could disrupt electrical equipment, disable radio communications, and made movement outside several times more dangerous than usual. A single strike would kill a human with zero chance of survival, and with an average frequency of five strikes a second for even the feeblest squalls of ash thunder, made the phenomenon a very serious threat.
He growled, turning his back to the window and stalking across the spartan room, his eyes aching from the cold fluorescent light. Nothing was in the room save a grey coat hanging on a peg in the wall next to the entrance door, and a chair and desk with radio equipment piled on top of it, all coated in dust and looking as though they hadn't been touched in months. The inhabitant knew it was futile to even try and use the radio; it might have worked, but who was going to hear him? Just another lonely voice screaming into the night.
He shook his head. No point thinking about that right now, he had a job to do. He walked up to a shining steel door inset in the grey concrete of the wall. A hand clad in a fingerless glove reached towards a key panel next to the door, keying in a four-digit code, soft beeps acknowledging the buttons presses. The keypad glowed green and beeped again in acceptance, and the door slid open with a pneumatic hiss, revealing a cold, cramped box of an elevator. He stepped into it, the door hissing back into place behind him, and he thumbed a button labelled 'B3'. A second of silence passed, and then the elevator began its slow, grinding descent into the ground below. He was going a long way down; each floor had ten metres between it and the next. The steel doors for floors B1 and B2 slid by without incident, and the elevator slow to a halt as the final door appeared, 'B3' stamped on it messily, as though rushed. The man smirked, although there was more cynicism than amusement behind it.
"Everything was rushed back then…" he murmured to himself, walking through to door as it slid open. "No idea of how much time we would have…"
He sighed, and looked around the room he had arrived at. B3 was more homely than the other floors; it was his living quarters, decorated with the little possessions he had managed to bring with him. It was small and cluttered, a single bed in the corner, the sheets folded and rumpled haphazardly from weeks of nightmares, a couple of carryalls and a rucksack resting on it. A desk stood opposite from it, a computer quietly humming and whirring away, the monitor displaying its screensaver. Boxes were piled up in the other two corners, full of various items and documents that no longer served a purpose.
At the back of the room, opposite to the elevator door and next to the bed, was the door to the generator room, a keypad set into it for issuing remote commands to the turbine inside. He paid these things no mind though, save the desk, which he quickly walked to and sat at, bringing the computer back to life with a keystroke. A quick glance at his watch told him it was time, but he wanted to review the orders just to be sure. He navigated through his hard drive, locating a video file and executing it. He watched silently as the video popped up and began to play.
It was low quality for ease of transmission, the screen colours washed out but still managing to convey the dire situation. There was a woman dressed in purple, with long, blonde hair and an anguished expression on her face, breaking through the snow on the screen. The sound crackled, and noises of mayhem could be heard in the background, alarms blaring and the indistinct shapes of technical staff in lab coats blurring back and forth behind her. She was saying something, the noises fading in and out.
"…-ake, w-we don't have mu-much time," she said, stumbling over her words. "The S-…-d…-mb was detonated one minute twenty seconds ago, a hundred miles west of the Ye-……-met capital. It'll reach here in less than two minutes. You've got to get to-…a-C……-ast as you can; take only the things you need. Don't worry about evacuations; I know it sounds cold saying it, but there's nothing we can do. Nothing anyone can do…" she paused, biting her lip, shaking slightly.
"The other CO's will hopefully get their messages," she said, doubt was creeping onto her features. "M-… …-s heading to…Bunker Eps-…, …-mi's at Zeta-…" the video faded out completely for a few seconds, snow and static drowning out everything else, before the woman returned. "-chel and I are holing up in the Central Command Bunker here in the capital as soon as it hits." She took a deep breath, steadying herself and looking at him with a steely resolve.
"The scientists here predict total global coverage within 6 months, with massive dro-…-ture and-…- ood web crumbling. They don't predict a total extinction though, which means there is hope. I have arr-…-a-…-iting period of two years exactly before we link up and try to rebuild. Until that time, please…" she looked down sadly. "Stay safe."
Then the background started to dim, and the woman whirled around to watch. Letting out an anguished moan, she turned back to the screen.
"It's coming. We have to go. Stay safe, stay hidden. Two years, that is an order!"
She cut the feed.
He was silent, taking slow breaths and staring off into space, eyes unfocused and not watching the monitor in front of him. He knew it was today, he had been preparing for weeks, but the finality of it had only just struck him. Today was the day. Two years exactly since Nightfall.
It was time. Time to leave this godforsaken pit of a bunker and brave the nightmare out there to see what had become of his fellow CO's…his friends. He wasted no time at all, shutting down the computer and crossing to the generator door. He started to key commands into the keypad, issuing a total power shutdown in five minutes. He decided against wiping the computer's hard drive and destroying any of the sensitive documents; he would be back in the future, and it wasn't like there were any remaining hostile forces that could use them anyway. He put on the rucksack and snatched the carryalls, striding over to the elevator door and punching the buttons with a knuckle. The door hissed open, he entered and hit the floor number, and left floor B3 for the foreseeable future.
As soon as the door opened on the ground floor he was out of it, focusing only on the thick, shining steel security door that blocked him from the outside world. He dropped a carryall to free up a hand and punched in yet another code on yet another keypad, grabbing his coat and draping it around his shoulders as the door slowly and painfully ground its way open. He picked up the carryall again and exited the bunker without as much as a second glance, leaving the sound of the door grinding shut in his wake. He took stock of his surroundings; not much had changed out here since last time, when he was prepping his Recon for departure.
He was in a natural valley, facing towards one of the steep craggy sides, the other ascending behind him. The bunker was set into the wall, mostly hidden by natural rock formations, perfect for staying hidden. About fifty metres in front of him was a lake that stretched all the way down the valley, grey, polluted, and dead from the ash that had fallen into it over the past two years. A beaten dirt path wound its way from the bunker to the bank, splitting off and going both ways, following the water off into the distance. His eyes barely acknowledged the desolation around him, not even noticing the ever-present flakes of ash. Instead, they looked over to the right, at a small concrete alcove next to the bunker, where the dull orange shape of his Recon resided. He wasted no time, striding quickly over to it, the ash beneath his feet crunching like snow, the crackling and rumbling of the ash thunder ever-present in his ears.
"Great…driving alone, in a Recon, through ash thunder. Just my goddamn luck," he hissed, opening the passenger side door and dumping his bags into the foot well and onto the seat. He closed the door, finally putting his coat on properly now that his arms were free, and went round to the driver's side, quickly getting in, belting up, and starting the engine. It would be a long, dangerous journey to the capital spanning several hundred miles, and he hoped he either had enough fuel or would be able to find some on the way. He peered out through the windscreen, looking at the grey clouds as they flashed from the lightning.
"Seems to be letting up…" he whispered to himself. "No time like the present." He gunned the engine and drove out of the cover of the alcove, pulling out onto the path and following it south, the ash billowing around him and the clouds flashing menacingly. He had to head south along the valley, join up with the nearest freeway, and make a beeline for the capital. As he left the bunker that had been his grim haven for two years, he sighed.
It was time to find out what had happened to Orange Star after Nightfall.