The basement of the Military Base was pitch-black. The only thing Emma could see was Wifi, who surveyed the room in a crouch. No one made a sound.
Slowly, Wifi began to advance, his body pressed to the ground. Suddenly Wifi mewled softly, his luminescent green eyes staring at Emma.
Emma noticed this and put both hands out in front of her, then mimed picking something up.
Suddenly, Wifi turned his head away from them and seemed to disappear. His mulch-like black and grey fur blended into the dark, making him nearly invisible in the blackness.
"What-" Alfred put a hand on her shoulder quickly and without warning, startling Emma and making her smack him accord the face and knee him in the groin before he could react, putting him off guard. She realized who it was two seconds later and patted him on the shoulder.
"Don't scare me like that." She whispered.
"Lesson learned." Alfred choked.
Wifi reappeared at Emma's feet, circling around them and heading off again. Emma followed him this time, grabbing Alfred's arm to be sure that he would follow.
They halted at a door. Emma felt around before she found the handle, twisting it open.
The room they were in was dimly lit by some sort of emergency light, but it was lit enough to make both Emma and Alfred smile. It was an emergency supply closet, full of guns,food, ammunition, and other survival needs. There had been a couple of these down in the first floor of the bunker, but they had been ransacked. They had found a fair amount of corpses once they had gotten to the first floor, soldiers and intruders alike, but there was a strange lack of dead in the basement.
"Perfect, although I wouldn't take the canned stuff, it's probably rotten after the heat." Alfred took a backpack and filled it with dehydrated food packets and a couple of water bottles, along with extra ammo. He slipped a knife into the outer pocket and grabbed an army rifle like Emma's. "I like handguns better, but this is fine." He muttered as he weighed it in his hands, bringing it up to his shoulder, and shrugging.
The only bullets in the closet were made for rifles, not for his small but convenient pistol.
"I guess I should get a new gun, too." Emma set her old rifle down and removed another new one from the rack.
"Hey, tell me how you got promoted. And how the army let you keep your cat. We don't allow pets."
"Not now, sir." Emma was stuffing a blanket into her backpack.
"Yes, now."
"Here, have a jacket." She threw him a camouflage insulated jacket.
"It's probably more than a hundred fucking degrees up there and you're telling me to take a coat?"
Emma shrugged. "Best to be prepared, sir."
"I don't need it." Alfred huffed. Emma stuffed it into her backpack anyways, grabbing another hunting knife and looking around.
"Oh, I forgot about Wifi…" She found a few cans of canned tuna and put them into the inside pockets of her coat. "He can handle the bacteria."
"...If you say so."
"Shut up. He's not going to die. He's been useful today, right?"
"That's true." Alfred admitted.
Emma paused, sighing and surveyed her cat, who was currently cleaning himself by rubbing a paw over his muzzle.
"Should we take this emergency radio?" Alfred asked quietly.
"We won't need it. You know that." Emma replied slowly. "There's no one to help us."
"Right," Alfred murmured. After messing with the controls hopelessly for a moment, he found a frequency. The radio buzzed, crackled and popped, but you could just make out the words and melody of a song.
"Sometimes quiet is violent
I find it hard to hide it
My pride is no longer inside
It's on my sleeve
My skin will scream
Reminding me of
Who I killed inside my dream
I hate this car that I'm driving
There's no hiding for me
I'm forced to deal with what I feel
There is no distraction to mask what is real
I could pull the steering wheel
I ponder of something terrifying
'Cause this time there's no sound to hide behind
I find over the course of our human existence
One thing consists of consistence
And it's that we're all battling fear-"
Alfred quickly switched it off. It was too much, the bad-quality radio and it's music. His face contorted as his eyes started to burn with coming tears again.
"I'm sorry, sir…" Emma put a hand on his shoulder. "We'll - You'll survive this, I swear."
"I know." Alfred sighed.
"Alright, let's go." Emma took a flashlight and flicked it on, scoping out the room for a second. A dead weight had fallen on their shoulders and mind, heavy silhouettes of despair. They were tired and their clothes were soaked with sweat.
The basement seemed to be deserted, so Emma walked right over to the staircase that lead up, only to notice it was starting to get cold. At least, cold compared to the usual intense heat.
"Now it's cold!" Alfred said in a whiny voice.
"Toughen up, soldier." Emma replied dryly. "After about a year of this, I would think that the most powerful nation in the world would have gotten used to the apocalypse."
"Hey, don't be so grim."
"Now, excuse me if I sound rude, but I don't see on your wavelength. I won't live forever if we survive this. And I don't see me surviving this. No matter how long me and my cat spent training for war, no matter how long I've been starving myself to keep this cat alive, I'm not immortally powerful. I make mistakes. I'll die." Emma snapped.
There was a long silence after her words.
"I'm giving this my all, sir. I want to be someone you remember if you get out alive." She added softly. "But right now, I'm tired and my legs hurt."
"Right. We can't stay here, we need to get above ground." Alfred pushed past her and walked up the stairs.
"...Right, I apologize, sir…"
Their trip up the stairs was strangely uneventful except for the increasing chill, which was relieving at first, but it soon became stressfully cold. Wifi was fine, although his fur, used to the heat, was rather thin. Unfortunately, both Emma and Alfred were starting to get uncomfortable.
"Take your jacket, sir." Emma had said this a couple of times, and she was now carrying the jacket she had stuffed into her backpack for him in her arms.
"No, I don't need it." Alfred replied stubbornly.
"Alright."
They made it to a door that said 'Ground Level' and Alfred took a deep breath as he rested his hand on the handle.
"Better to rip off the band-aid then pull it off slowly." Emma muttered seriously, putting her hand over his and pushing the door open.
The first thing they noticed was the smoke. Emma had only opened the door a couple of inches, but thick grey tendrils seeped through the opening. Alfred inhaled a little, and broke into a coughing fit. He immedately brought his shirt up to his mouth, letting out a few more hacks before breaking off with a deep breath.
"Don't breathe." He whispered to Emma, who had already armed herself with a bandana. It wasn't the best, but it was good enough. She was more worried about Wifi.
"Wifi?" She muttered. "Wifi, where are…"
Emma opened the door completely, looking around frantically. "Wifi!"
The last thing she felt before numbness was something painful cracking into the back of her skull.
Emma woke up to an itchy throbbing in her head and the rest of her body feeling very, very cold. She didn't open her eyes, it was too much work. She didn't even move. Her whole body felt limp, tired, any adrenaline that had powered her fighting spirit before was gone.
"Sir…?" Emma felt her lips move, just barely. She felt like she was being frozen into a black of ice.
"Emmy?" She heard Alfred's voice, surprised and with a hint of happiness.
"...Emmy?" Slowly she opened her eyes to a wall of dirty and yellowing beige tile. "Is that my name now?" Her head still hurt holy hell, but she would survive. It felt a little numb in the cold, honestly.
"Here." Alfred ignored her question, and Emma felt a layer of weightless warmth surround her. "Take the emergency blanket, I have the coat you packed."
"It's cold."
"...," Alfred paused. "Yeah, I know."
"What happened?" Emma wrapped the thin plastic blanket farther around her. "Where are we?"
"We're in the single bathroom in an abandoned gas station that's still in not-half-bad shape, in a rural area on the edge of New Jersey." He explained.
"Okay, wow. How long have I been out?"
"Two days."
"Where's my cat?"
"I don't know."
"...What the fuck happened?"
"You got knocked out by one of those Asian guys. Don't ask me how there was any survivors, I have no idea. But there was five to ten of them left, and no sign of your cat, and I didn't hold out too long.
"I've got a nasty gash in my back, like yours. Yours is healing, though, so don't worry. It's all scabbed over, and I've been cleaning it. And I don't think my wounds were very deep, because I can't feel it at all."
"Why are we here, though? In the…bathroom?"
"This - the gas station - was their base."
"Oh," Emma muttered. "And...you haven't seen Wifi."
"No...I'm sorry."
"It's okay, sir." She smiled at him. "It'll be fine. One last question- why is it so damn cold…?"
"I don't know, honestly. It was freezing when we got out. And...right now...it's snowing. There's 3 feet out there, I swear. I locked up the whole place, but all the appliances don't work, and most of the food is bad. Some of it is still good, though." Alfred explained.
"Oh. That's strange." Emma sighed and sat up sluggishly. "Here, sir, let me see your back. Just in case."
"Alright."
Emma walked over to where Alfred was sitting, pulling off the jacket and his shirt up and gasped, her eyes wide and her hand shaking a little as she went to touch his now exposed back.
"What's wrong?" Alfred asked curiously.
"Eh…," Emma's eyes scanned his back in horror. Purple and blue bruises covered it, with three or four long, deep red cuts that were oozing with pus and infection. His skin felt cold and dead under her touch. "These...your back is…"
"What?"
"Your wounds are infected, sir." She frowned. "Did...did you take any medicine, or even try cleaning them?"
"Infected…? How? I can't feel anything!"
"Did you take any sort of medicine?"
Alfred paused a moment. "Yeah, it hurt a lot, and I found some stuff out there." He motioned to the door. "So I took it. I wasn't sure how much, so I just took a lot of it because I was in a lot of pain."
"You...I think you must have overdosed, sir." Emma stood up and rolled her shoulders, wincing at how sore they were. Her headache was bad, but she could deal with it. "I'll go out and see if there's anything I can clean them out with."
"Be careful." Alfred warned.
"I will be. The coat, please. You can have the blanket." She shivered slightly and took the coat, handing him the blanket. Alfred handed Emma her gun and she stroked the metal a little, realizing how cold it was.
Ah well, it'll warm up.
"I'll be right back, sir."
"H-Ha ha, yeah."
She pulled on the handle, shivering as a fresh wave of cold air hit her face. The gas station was in incredibly good condition. There appeared to have been a small fire in the part of the store that had fuel and car parts, but other than that, the food seemed mostly untouched, although Emma didn't doubt that most of it was spoiled.
Emma scanned the shelves, finding all sorts of useless things. Phone chargers. Travel guides. Even some old and crappy flip-phones.
Next to a few old bags of chips, she found basic first-aid stuff, but there was hardly any left, and if you weren't looking closely, it would be easy to miss.
"Damn." Emma took a few rolls of gauze and some hydrogen peroxide. Suddenly, she heard a loud knock on the door.
Suspicious, she raised her gun and slowly advanced to the glass doors, where she finally saw the extent of the snow for herself. It was a true blizzard; there was at least, as Alfred had said, three feet of snow. And standing right outside was a girl with pale skin and long straight white-blonde hair.
"Who are you?" Emma said, hoping whoever it was could hear through the glass.
"My name is Natalya." The girl said with a thick Russian accent. "I don't have anywhere to go."
"Why should I trust you?" Emma lowered the nose of her rifle down nonetheless.
"Let her in, Emma."
Emma heard Alfred speaking from behind her and turned around.
"You know her, sir?"
Alfred paused for a long time.
"Yes."