It's been about a year now since this all started. A whole year without any real light. A whole year without fresh air. A whole year without him. When this had all happened, the underground shelters had stockpiled as much food and water as possible. Everything that wasn't found to be a necessity was cast aside, including my favorite candy and my soda pop. I'm not sure why this still bugs me because I should just be happy that I'm alive. For now.

A new person seems to die every day around here. Some people just can't take the emotional stress of having their loves ones ripped from them and having nowhere to go, while others just aren't physically fit to be living in what was probably once a mine that God only knows might collapse on us any day. Other times, however, people just kill themselves when they see no point in staying around. I used to want many things in life and had any purposes. Now, my only purpose is to find the one I lost.

The people around me go sort of crazy when one dies. Although, desperate times call for desperate measures so maybe I'm just the crazy one. When one of us dies, a small group of people cook them and eat them. While this is utterly disgusting and something that I would never do in a million years, it's also helpful. You know how when you die and if you're buried, the creepy crawlies find their way into your casket and eat you? Well, consider this group the worms. Without them, there'd be too many dead bodies decomposing. They take the bones and other parts and use them as silverware and jewelry. As sick as that sounds, it's nowhere near as sick as the fact that I've grown used to the smell of rotting flesh.

I've made a few friends here, I guess. Their names are Gustav and Georg. Gustav was in a police academy and was a promising new student who was saved to be a part of the future. If there even is one. I'm not really sure what Georg did. Part of me wonders if he was just some kind of freeloading stoner who really just didn't do anything. I saw him light up quite a bit when we first got down here, but his supply ran out nearly a month later. I wonder if he just got caught up with the crowd like I did. While it's nice to talk to these guys, they all have their quirks. I suppose it's better than having enemies. I've seen the cannibals eyeing me.

Gustav was the one who had grabbed me and pulled me away from my lover. The first thing I did when I got into the shelter was punch him square in the face and begin to beat the living daylight out of him. I guess I should have thanked him for saving my life or something, but in a way he ruined my life. I've learned to forgive and forget, though and if I'm ever making it out of here alive, I want him on my side.

Georg was different I guess. The second week we spent down here, I found myself alone in a dark part of the shelter, bawling my eyes out, wondering what I had done to deserve this. I was so depressed and I don't think that I could have ever gotten myself to continue living if it hadn't been for him. I guess he really is a friend of mine. I was sitting there crying so hard over him when I heard footsteps.

"Care for a puff?" Georg asked me as he sat down and nudged his joint towards me.

"Thanks." I sighed as I took few long drags and coughed, handing it back to him, trying to hide my crying, causing him to laugh softly.

"You know, we've all had great pain in our lives." He sighed and turned to face me, a pathetic and sympathetic look on his face.

"Why is this happening to us? Why?" I groaned as I once more began to cry.

"There are many why's in life. Like, why did my dad abandon us? Why are we here? Why didn't I fuck that hot blonde chick when I had the chance? Why do birds look like they want to kill us? Why is it that every night my hand seems to find its way down my pants?" He grinned and nudged me again.

"That's disgusting." I laughed and shook my head, looking down at my hands before I realized I had put something in my mouth that he had touched with his probably tainted hand. "Do you know if they packed hand sanitizer?" I huffed.

"Sorry JT, I don't think so."

"JT? That's not my name…What are you talking about?"

"Justin Timberlake. You know…Cry me a river!" He had started to sing, making me groan in frustration. Never again would I let a stranger see me cry. "So what's your name?"

"I'm Tom." I held my hand out before I thought twice about it and quickly retracted it.

"Georg." He laughed. And that was that. That's how he became my friend.

I'm not sure what's more annoying to me, being called JT all the time by some strung up stoner or being friends with a future police officer. Sure Gustav was nice, but he drove all of us crazy by how strict and orderly he was. We had begun to call him "The General" in private because he ran that shelter like it was an Army boot camp. I don't think he meant to be so rough, but maybe that was just how he coped with everything going around. When he wasn't ordering people around or criticizing them, I would see him gazing at a gold locket he wore around his neck, which had a picture of himself and a girl. I wish I had carried a picture of Bill with me wherever I went. Maybe I would feel less lonely then if I had his smiling face staring up at me like nothing at ever happened. Like I wasn't heartbroken and helpless.

It had to have been another month or so when the greatest news had come to us all. It was finally safe for us to leave this hell hole and walk about on the surface. We could go to the other shelters and find our loved ones. We could go and see what was left of our houses. We could finally breathe.

Georg, Gustav, and I had come up with a game plan. We were going to check things out at Georg's old place first, go to Gustav's, and then find Bill. We wanted to get the two stationary targets out of the way before we ran around trying to find someone who was probably running around trying to find us. Berlin is a pretty big city, so I don't think I was very hopeful that I would find him soon anyways.

The second that the hatch to the shelter was opened, the three of us jumped out, expecting to see a lush green city with tall skyscrapers. We were expecting butterflies and trees, gardens bushes. However, nothing could brace us for what we saw. The earth was torn up. What had been beautiful green grass was now a yellowish brown color. The air around us was clear, but was no doubt polluted from the bombs that had gone off. The skyscrapers had gaping holes in them, steel beams and pieces of glass hanging off of buildings like dangling bits of thread. Despite the extreme damage, a few buildings survived and when I looked farther ahead, I could see green. I hoped to God it was grass. I hoped that side of the city was normal.

So the three of us ran for it. We ran as fast as we could towards the bright green that we thought was grass. We hoped to see the houses sitting perfectly in rows, puppy dogs chasing their tails, and little girls playing hopscotch on the sidewalks. The second we reached the green, I felt like I would throw up. I was sick to my stomach. What we had thought was grass was a pond; the water turned an electric, sickeningly neon green. I looked up and saw the houses and how there was hardly anything left. The sidewalks and roads were all chewed up. I couldn't believe my eyes. I was terrified.

Since everything was pretty much blown up to shit, chewed up by the skies, and thrown up back onto the ground, it made it very hard to navigate. There were maybe five or so street signs around the neighborhood we were in. Thankfully, Georg still remembered how to get to his house from where we were. So we followed him there. Surprisingly, his house was still standing. Well, we could see the frame of the house and one wooden beam still stood.

Georg led the way into his house. We weren't really in anything seeing as we were pretty much outside, but then he led us down into the basement. He explained to us how his mom told him to go into the city to apply for a job, while she was going to be reading downstairs in the basement. Already I felt dread coming to my body.

Sure enough, when we got to his mother's couch were she loved to read, there she was. Dead. She was pretty much a skeleton now after all of this time, her hair stuck to her scalp, having burned parts of her clothes, skin, and hair to her body from the heat of the bomb. There were maggots on her body, crawling around in her eye sockets and everything. The second I saw her, I immediately had to turn around and throw up.

"Mom?" Georg blinked and poked his mother's shoulder, causing her head to snap off of her body and fall into her lap, causing me to once more vomit my stomach out.

"I don't think she can hear you." Gustav replied rather emotionlessly.

"I guess you're right huh?" Georg laughed and plopped himself down on the couch next to his dead mother.

"That's…fucking…sick…" I whimpered through teary eyes that came from my constant puking. I should have learned not to look at her, but I figured I'd see a lot of this so I might as well get myself used to it.

"I'm gonna go raid the medicine cabinet." Georg announced as he jumped to his feet, coming back five minutes later with a bowl filled with pill bottles, stuffing all of them into the backpack he had carried while sitting next to his dead mother.

"I uhm…" Gustav coughed and sat on the other side of Georg's mom, looking down at the head in her lap. "I…like her hair."

"Are you…fucking…kidding me?!" I tried to communicate through cycles of puking, my voice as loud as a mouse.

"Oh thanks man." Georg laughed before his face became serious. "Wait…Do you want it?"

"NO! Oh God, no!" Gustav's eyes grew wide as he sat there mortified.

"Are you sure? If you want it, you can have it."

"I said I don't fucking want your dead mother's god damn fucking hair!" He yelled in disgust.

"Suit yourself." Georg shrugged and picked up his mom's head, pulling the maggots off of her and eating them, clearly hungry or something. All I knew was he was fucked up. By this point I was sure I'd thrown up my organs. Georg smiled fondly at his mother's skull and went off and washed it, coming back with it before he had stuffed the head into his backpack, zipped it up and smiled at us, saluting in a manner to let us know he was ready to go.

"You're…One…Fucked up…Individual…" I coughed and wiped my mouth, pulling my eyes from the sight of his mother and nearly bolting up to the surface, wiping my teary eyes on my sleeve before Gustav led us to his house.

His house was nothing more than the flat surface of his floor with few objects around. The only thing that stood was his bedroom. He nearly bolted there before he stopped in the door frame. I had never seen someone collapse so fast in my life. I walked towards the door frame and looked in, seeing a charred black body laying face down on the bed, it's hand reaching for a picture of a beautiful blonde girl and Gustav. I instantly saw what I feared most. What if this was how it was with Bill? Was he dead?

Gustav had lost all of his composure, doubled over on the ground as he sobbed and dry heaved. I knelt down beside him and rested my hand on his back, rubbing it soothingly as I just stayed there for him, to give him silent support. I stared at the girl and blinked before I realized it. She hadn't died initially but was so burned to a crisp. It must have taken all of her strength to make it to the bedroom, to try and grab that picture so she could be with the one she loved when she died. The poor thing never reached it, having died nearly an inch away. I stood up and grabbed the picture, staring down at it.

"You know, she was really beautiful." I commented to Gustav, offering him the picture of the two of them.

"Thank you, Tom." He wiped his tears, struggling to pull himself together as he took the picture and stared down at it, at her. He smiled sadly to himself and slipped it into his bag, standing up as he walked to the bed and sat next to her body, his hand moving to brush the dead hair out of her charred skeletal face. He leaned down and kissed what used to be her forehead, whispering to her of how he loved her and that they'd be together in whatever Heaven there was.

Georg had clumsily fallen into the bedroom, slipping pill bottles into his backpack, laughing hysterically, his eyes nearly tearing up. When he saw the sight before him, he stopped laughing and became really serious, looking at the two of us with Gustav's dead girlfriend. Gustav looked up at him, no energy in him to yell at the man. He stood up and made his way through the closet to get clothes for himself, stumbling on his girlfriend's favorite necklace, slipping it around his neck to rest against his chest under his shirt, right against the locket he wore.

"I can tell she must have had a really nice ass." Georg laughed as he moved to sit next to the corpse on the bed, spotting a diamond on the dead girl's finger, smirking slightly to himself.

"Excuse me?" Gustav responded coldly as his eyes narrowed.

"Engaged?" Georg asked, grinning.

"Yes. Why does that concern you?"

"It doesn't." Georg smiled and laughed to himself, leaning down as he tried to pull the diamond ring off of the corpse's finger.

"DON'T YOU TOUCH HER!" Gustav yelled and pulled out his gun. Naturally, all guns were banned in the shelters, but not for police officers and officials. Lucky them.

"Ooh, big gun. I'm scared." Georg laughed and pulled away from the corpse, leaving the ring on her finger before he put his hands up and got onto his knees on the floor.

"What are you on?!" I yelled to him, not knowing what the fuck this lunatic found to be so funny.

"Everything and anything." He laughed, his eyes tearing up again as he nearly rolled around on the ground laughing as he looked up at Gustav pointing the gun at him before his high eyes turned to eyes of terror and he began choke, coughing and sputtering.

My eyes widened in shock as I looked at Gustav. Gustav instantly dropped to his knees and tried his best to save the guy, but nothing worked. It wasn't long before he became very still. I screamed out in shock, scared that Georg had overdosed in front of my very eyes.

"Take his clothes. They should fit you." Gustav sighed as he stood up.

"I'm not wearing a dead guy's fucking clothes!" I yelled out in shock, my eyes instantly tearing up.

"Take. His god damn. Clothes." Gustav growled, pointing his gun at me. I was about to do so before I heard laughter and looked down in shock. There Georg was laughing and looking up at us.

"Ahaha! You guys just got Punk'd!" He yelled out as he absolutely howled with laughter.

In a flash, Gustav yelled out and pointed his gun at Georg, firing. I yelled out in shock and dropped down lay in a ball on the floor, scared that this fucker had gone postal. I heard screaming and I had thought that I was done for. That was before Georg spoke again.

"YOU SHOT ME IN THE FUCKING ARM!" Georg yelled out as he sat up and stared down at his arm.

"You'll get over it." Gustav huffed as he grabbed a bandana from his dresser drawer and wrapped it around Georg's arm. "Are you ready to stop being an asshole now?" He stood up and walked to the door frame, waiting for us. I stood up shakily and coughed, trying to seem like I had been tough and not just acted like a little pussy.

"Whatever happened to justice?" Georg groaned as he stood up, walking to stand next to Gustav, fastening his backpack onto himself, wincing as he put his shot arm through the loophole.

"Justice?" Gustav shook his head, taking one look at his dead fiancé. "Justice can blow me."