Thanks to all the people that liked and fav the story. I decided to retake it and try to write all weeks like with the original one.
I open my eyes, it's cold. Inside the sheets there is a decent temperature but outside them it must be ten or twelve degrees. Winter is noticeable. It may not be winter but honestly I have never seen snow in a different time of winter so it must be. At what point in Germany did I appear?
Because I know that the closer you get to the north, the colder and snow you will find, so if I am far north it would be normal for it to snow even if it was not winter, right? I don't know, I've never been this far north.
Today I have the feeling that something will change, the bad thing is that I don't know if for the better or for the worse.
First things first, you have to get up. I have to make the effort, since I know that it is so good in here and; in addition to the brutal temperature difference. I take a deep breath like I should be holding my breath or something, quickly pick up the sheets and pull on the pants of my newly purchased uniform. As soon as I finish dressing him I feel like I'm short of breath. I blow off all the carbon dioxide and breathe in and out as if I had just come out of the water. As I start to breathe fast, my metabolism kicks in and the hair on my arms stand on end, the cold begins to feel.
I finish dressing hurrying the time to try not to feel the low temperature for another second.
With the uniform on, it takes a few seconds before the cold stops. The truth is that the uniforms are well made. I have to admit that those who designed the uniforms knew what they were doing.
I get off the couch, the room is dark, it does not look very good but enough to walk through the house without tripping on anything or hitting the walls.
I look at the fireplace, the fire went out. Now I understand the reason for the low temperature. What I don't understand is that it will turn off after I put two fat logs on before I go to sleep. How long are they supposed to last? Two hours each?
I will have to relight a fire and add a lot of wood to it.
I go to the kitchen, where I left all the food I found.
I have no cookies left, I miss cookies. I open one of the cupboards and soon I remember that there is no milk either, I miss the milk.
Damn, I miss too much and it's only been a few days since I got here. I don't know if I'll ever get used to this strange situation.
The mobile battery is about to die, I have nowhere to recharge it; in fact I don't even know if electricity was for public use in Europe at this time. I also don't know if it will be the correct voltage.
Not that it matters much, apart from the high intensity flashlight and the camera function, I don't know if it would be of real use to me here and now.
I take one of the canned jars from the cupboard and open it, praying there is something palatable inside. It is hard, it is difficult to open it; I struggle with the lid of the bottle for a few seconds until I can unscrew it.
Inside are what appear to be canned vegetables. Bad choice, I close the bottle and take another. This time it is something "appetizing", they are fruits in syrup, like last night. I will have to save the vegetables for lunch.
I finish "having breakfast", I take the backpack and I go to the pond of the other time. I arrive without any difficulty at the ditch from which I extracted water yesterday. I follow the ditch a bit to go to where the strange black enameled structure I saw yesterday was. I see some animals during my walk, you can hear the song of the birds, at the end of the ditch you can see... Nothing.
There is no sign of the huge black bunker from yesterday.
Suddenly I freeze in place, I cannot understand how a building disappears without making noise. They could have blown him up, but he should have heard something last night, there are no signs of explosives in the area either. The place is the same as yesterday, only the big black building is gone.
A small voice in my mind tells me that I should leave the place immediately while another urges me to investigate. This time I will let the voice of curiosity win. Somewhat fearful I approach little by little the place where that building used to be. Everything is calm, although I am able to hear my own breathing, I stop for a moment to discern if silence has suddenly fallen. I hear the birds again and the splash of some animals in the water; It is my imagination, fault of the tension of the moment.
Soon I reach the place, the vegetation seems to have been burned by something strange. In the place where the building was now there is only one hole. Not a crater, but a hole, as if the building had been nailed to the ground here.
The earth in the hole is burned like the surrounding vegetation. It's like you've used some kind of potent pesticide on the place and then set it on fire. I scan the hole with my eyes until I reach the other end of the opening.
There is something on the other side of the vegetation and the hole that makes my blood run cold. There are marks, no, holes or small holes at regular intervals that start from the hole and disappear into the distance. Something came out of the hole, something big and heavy and with legs. Now the question is, what was that? Was it really a building? Do the buildings here have legs?
Nothing I remembered from history indicated to me that a mobile building could exist. A few pressing questions overwhelmed my mind next. To return to? Where was he? And the most important, why did he leave?
I was also struck by the burn marks from the hole and vegetation. How could it be otherwise, I had to touch it.
As I touched it I noticed that it was cold, if this burned the vegetation it must have happened yesterday, I also noticed a strange itch in the hand similar to when you touch a nettle. I move my hand away immediately upon noticing the stinging sensation. In a few seconds the sensation disappears. The effect should not be long-lasting, or does, or requires more exposure. My hand is now stained with a strange brownish colour.
I retreat to the ditch, with now stagnant water to wash my hands. As soon as my hand comes into contact with water and I rub one hand with the other to remove the soot, there is an effect similar to when you put detergent in a pot of water and grease.
A thin film of something I can't discern separates from the point where I reached into the circle, enlarging the circle until it completely covers the expanse of the pool. Disconcerted by that fact, I take my hands out of the water quickly, shake them off, and dry them against my pants. Then I run back to my current home.
What should i do now? And why is everything getting so weird? As if time travel wasn't weird enough, now we have to add the strange events that have been happening since I arrived.
I need to think, I need to evaluate possibilities. I have to find out what's going on, or at least what happened here.
Recapping what happened today, I decide that it might be unwise to follow in the footsteps of the "walking building" but less intelligent not to do so and not try to obtain information, so I gather my courage, I take the backpack that I took from the truck and put the bottle of water next to it. With the canteen in case I get thirsty on the way and I go back out the back door, I close with the key and put it in my pants pocket.
I go all the way around the house to go outside, it is deserted. Goodness. I hoped it was still as deserted as when I got here.
I start the road to the ditch again. When I get to the burned hole I go around it to start following the tracks. The trail goes through the fields once cultivated, I don't know what they grew here, maybe cereals of some kind.
The trail also crosses a couple of paths to end up in a really big hole in the ground. What seems strange to me is that the surrounding land is not burned like the hole near the ditch from which it came out, but is simply a hole like the one that an animal that lives in burrows but of a disproportionate size could dig.
I look at the edge of the burrow, it has an access with a practicable and accessible slope, I suppose that otherwise nothing could get in and out of there easily and safely. I also notice that the burrow seems to measure several dozen meters deep, my eyes are lost in the darkness that gradually darkens the tunnel as it goes deeper into the earth.
As before, I am curious and I begin to descend through the access until I make out a couple of red dots in the dark; they don't look like eyes, nor have I ever seen red eyes that glow in the dark. Some more appear and I stop walking. A sharp friction noise begins to be heard, as if something crawling is coming out of the tunnel. At that moment I turn around and hurry back to the ditch.
When I arrive I turn my head to make sure if I had been followed. I don't see anyone or anything close. I sit next to some trees to rest and try to recover from the mishap. I wake up after a quiet time and go home knowing that this place is probably no longer safe.
When I get home I eat something from the mason jars and start packing up everything I have, getting ready to move. I still don't know where, but something tells me I should leave the area immediately.
I put some clothes in one of the backpacks and everything that seems to be useful and I hang them using the harnesses. I leave the house and lock the door, then put it in my pocket as usual.
This time I head north, deducing the direction by the position of the moss on the walls and trees and the position of the sun in the sky.
When I reach the end of the town I see other trenches like the ones in the east. But these have no artillery pieces or machine gun nests, just an intricate complex of trenches and sandbag walls.
What is most striking is the fact that they appear to be facing south, which tells me that this town was a turning point in their defense against who knows what.
I stop in one of the trenches and pull out one of the maps, I may be able to try to find out my position if I find the defense positions on any of the maps.
After a few minutes of concentration, I find what might look like the town in which I have been living for the last few days. But the current situation and the information on the map are not entirely consistent.
But he revealed to me the possibility of a checkpoint a few kilometers to the north, I doubt that it is still standing or in one piece but at least it seemed like a good place to spend the night without having to stay in town.
Looking at the map and remembering how far away were the things that did appear on it, he built a scale to calculate more or less how far the position is; about forty-five kilometers. It seems that the road will be long, it will probably take me all day. I think I should go home and start the journey tomorrow as dawn breaks.
I hear a thud in the distance, with some echo. I turn around to see that in the village a cloud of dust ascends to the sky. Something has happened, it may be nothing, it may just be a ruin finally giving way; It can also be whatever it was that was in the tunnel you are now looking for.
For once reason wins out over curiosity and I start the journey immediately.
I turn my gaze to the north, contemplate the desolate landscape, take a breath, pick up the maps and begin to walk.
The landscape begins to change as soon as I reach what looks like a four-lane highway. There are some cars and trucks parked in the gutters, old all of them.
It would be worth checking all of them, but I must have about six or seven hours of daylight left and I can't afford to waste time here when I need to get to the checkpoint and take cover for the night.
Any of the vehicles could contain something useful, but really right now I am more in need of getting to that place before nightfall.
Seeing that the sun is getting lower and lower, I speed up my pace. I don't think I'll arrive before nightfall, but at least I could get closer to my destination and get away from that strange burrow.
After a while while I was lost in my thoughts I see something different, something that makes me come out of my reverie. A semi caterpillar. This is one of these little "vans" with wheels in the front and tank tracks in the rear.
It is ochre in color, with gray stripes, it does not seem that they have been very careful in camouflaging.
The strange transport has a hole that goes in one side of the armor and exits the other way. It seems that they hit it full and had to throw it away.
The back door is open, well; rather, it is no longer there.
I look inside to calm my curiosity, repressed for so long it was taking me to force myself to impulsively launch myself to find out or investigate something.
The interior is blackened with mold and dust, there are duffel bags and helmets hanging on the side, I take the closest one and shake it off. I look inside, it has a leather and cloth interior, the leather must be worn and hard; who knows how long he's been here.
Without thinking much about it and having nowhere to leave it, I put it on my head and look inside the closest duffel bag.
Inside are some cans of what could be food, emergency combat rations, a pocket knife, a contraption that I assume is to open the cans, and a gas mask.
I spend some time taking all the duffel bags and searching them; the content is the same; if they all contain gas masks it is because they expected some kind of chemical attack, nothing gives me good news.
There are no weapons or ammunition in the transport, I am going to look a little more closely at the driver and copilot positions but looking to the west I see how low the sun is, I have to seek shelter, something with four walls and, if possible with the ceiling; the nights here are freezing.
I pull off the four-lane highway looking for somewhere I can spend the impending night. In an apocalypse it should be easy to find refuge, especially if you do not care much about their condition or what may be out there.
Looking northeast you can see some one and two story houses, for my little problem that will be enough.
I resume my march towards the village. When I arrive, the night has already arrived and it begins to get cold; there is no time to select a suitable house, I will enter the first one that is "whole".
Unfortunately for me, I have to keep walking a few hundred meters more because when I find a house, it has a hole in the wall, ceiling, or it is missing walls or roofs.
I am shivering with cold, my mist freezes as soon as he leaves my mouth when I breathe, and there is almost no light. Desperate for shelter, I go to the next house and enter through the hole in one of its walls.
The interior is wrecked, with burned pieces of furniture everywhere, dishes and what is left of a carpet on the floor. There is a room with a metal stove, the room has a door, it also has windows, but I no longer have the time or desire to complain or find something better.
I leave my things on the frayed carpet and go back to the room from before in search of something that can serve me as firewood, I take some pieces of furniture that have not yet burned and that do not seem damp and put them on the stove. Then I take some threadbare tablecloths from the table in what I think is the kitchen and put them in the metal container as well.
Then with the matches I had from the house where I stayed, I try to light a fire.
After using all the matches that I have left, I manage to make the fuel ignite, I close the door and block it with a chair that looks like it is about to break at any moment.
I curl up in front of the stove and close my eyes.
When I open them again I look out the window and it is still night. In the far south is a red glow. At first I thought it might be lightning or an explosion, but nothing sounded next.
Seeing that glow and then not hearing the aftershock sound a chill ran down my spine and I got up to check the fuel level in the boiler trying to drive the fear out of my head.
I need more wood to keep the fire going, so I pull back the chair and leave the room, the cold air hitting my face, now that I notice it; inside it is not bad at all.
I pick up more pieces of furniture and deposit them next to the boiler. I repeat this another three times until I am satisfied with the fuel level to warm me up.
Then I close the door again and lock it with the decrepit chair.
I look for something to throw over myself, I take my coat and use it as a blanket. Then I curl up in front of the fire again and close my eyes.