"-ailure in sector twelve. Power failure in sector twelve. Initiating emergency cryosleep procedure. Opening sleep pods."
Lights. Flashing red lights and an electronic voice filters into the sleep addled mind of Amelia Walker. Fingers fumble to open the pod's lid. It is cold to the touch. A thick icy fog rolls out and onto the floor, quickly followed by a pair of bare feet. The floor felt gritty, and everything was covered in a layer of dust.
Oh god, my heeeaad… Amelia mentally moans. Where the aspirin at? She slowly traverses the small room, leaving behind footprints in the grime. She sneezes as the dust begins to fly around, disturbed after an eon of gathering in the corners. Uh, where's the light switch? She thinks as she fumbles around in the low light. Her hand catches onto a protrusion on the wall. Here we go.
The lights in the ceiling fail to come on.
"Oh come on… Where the hell is the flashlight?" After a bit more searching, she finds the flashlight in a nearby cabinet, the batteries nearly drained after sitting in there for so long. But it was enough to find the stash of batteries in another drawer, and she quickly replaces the half dead ones. "Now we're talking." She mutters. Finding some spare uniforms to put on, she explores a bit more around the room. Nothing really worked without power though, so accessing the computer terminals is out of the picture for now. Thank god the doors still have power though. She hits the release button. The door slides halfway up before jamming in place with a loud whine. Well, half working, at any rate. She rolls under the door into the empty hallway. The place was as dark and silent as a tomb, emergency red lighting showing up occasionally down the passageway marking more entrances to rooms. And her occasional sneezing echoing down the empty passageways.
Plip, plip, plip. Water was leaking in several places, breaking the dark silence. Amelia carefully walks down the hallway, avoiding a particularly large puddle. What the hell happened to this place? I guess this thing wasn't rated to last to two thousand years. Now where are the rest of the cryopods? She comes to the first door, which had been wrenched open by somebody else a long time ago. An identical room to hers is seen, the sleep pod prominently taking up the center. Wait, somethings wrong. The pods control panel is flashing red, but what reads out instead stops her heart. A little heart symbol with a flat line next to it. Amelia runs over to the viewing panel in panic.
"Nononononono!"
Occupant: John Kinder
Status: Deceased
A gruesome sight meets her eyes as she wipes away at the grime on the pod's window, and she dry heaves onto the floor at the sight of a shriveled, sunken face that looked like it was straight out of The Last Crusade. After picking herself off of the ground, she suddenly had a terrible thought. Oh my God, David! Amelia rushes out of the room, frantically opening each and every door within the hallway she can find. She had gone to sleep before David had, so she had no idea which specific room he was in. A little voice in her head said it seemed a little selfish to be only concerned about him only, but she ignores it.
Every room she breaks into reveals more bodies, more reminders of humanity's failure. Some died buried in rubble, the ceiling having been caved in long ago, others to malfunctions, trapped within their pods, unable to break free. Those were the ones that disturbed her the most, faces locked in agony, shriveled hands leaving clawed scratch marks on the glass panes. Amelia desperately hopes not to find David in such a condition. Her mind probably wouldn't be able to take it.
Twelve rooms later, she comes across a half open door. Heart beating wildly, she pries open the door, and looks inside, hoping against hope that should would find him in here alive. She blinks. The pod was empty! She rushes around the room, desperately trying to find any trace, any clue of where he might have gone. There! A note on taped to the wall. It looked old and worn. Amelia snatches it off and begins to quickly read the words on it.
If you find this message, please be sure to deliver to Amelia. If you're dead, sorry wrong number.
.
.
.
Well, I've apparently had a malfunction with the pod. Several days ago I awoke to a crumbling survival bunker, and the computer said I had slept for nearly 950 years! How about that? But I guess this place wasn't rated for the two thousand years or so that we were promised. Anyways, I tried to wake the rest of you guys up, but I couldn't even get the doors open, they were locked until another thousand years have passed. I've tried everything short of actually blowing off the doors, but they refused to budge. I couldn't wake the rest of you guys up without risking your death. It breaks my heart that I would never be able to see you again. In a few more days I'll be heading out into the open world. It looks amazing out in the open, mother nature really did a good job cleaning up our mistakes. Fields of green everywhere and the bluest sky you can imagine! I plan on leaving by the time this message is written, see what I can do with the rest of my life on this planet. I'll be heading west somewhere, it looked like a good place to start. I hope that you'll find what I would have left behind by the time you read this letter. It's gonna have to last a thousand years for you to see it though, so I guess I'll have to start soon!
.
.
.
It's going to be a very lonely world out there without you, but we'll have to persevere. We have to.
I love you.
~David
Ps- If you find my skeleton, please don't step on my skull.
Amelia hadn't realized she was crying on the floor until much later.
Come on, pull yourself together, you can't give up now! She mentally yells.
Okay, just give me a few more minutes… just want to cry a bit more… The other side of her mind meekly says. But she ignore the thought and shakily gets up anyways. Come on, priorities straight, get your head in the game. First thing was to find a way to bring the power back online. She slaps in a new rack of batteries into the flashlight and heads for the generator room. Along the way she mentally notes where each individual room was and what was in them. Food storage was blocked off by a bit of rubble, but she can clear it away later. Control room was completely totaled though, a massive gaping hole leading out into the open world was left in it's place. I wonder what did that?
Everything seemed relatively intact though, so Amelia headed down to the reactor room to see what was blocking off the power to the rest of the place. A few floors later, she finds the massive doors that lead into the reactor room. On the way she had snatched up a geiger counter to make sure no radiation had been leaking from the place, and amazingly, there was none. She quickly spots the problem, a severed power line that lead to the rest of the facility was hanging off the wall.
Geez, thing looks like something try to chew on it for a while. She thinks to herself. Now where are those spare repair kits? Amelia spends the next hour fixing up the place and repairing what she can with her basic knowledge in engineering. A few hours and a pile of spare parts later and Amelia is rewarded with artificial light. A mechanical whine grows as what's left of the facility lights up for the first time in a long time.
"Ha ha, YES!" Amelia crows out to nobody in particular. Her depressing mood lifts along with the darkness. For the next few hours she cleares debris from hallways, salvages equipment and supplies, and sets up a temporary home in one of the office rooms. Another whole hour is devoted to burying the remains of the bodies outside in the grass. She marvels at the scenery the first time she stepped outside, not a single evidence of the war she had left behind remained, instead a rolling hillside of grass extended to the horizon, with the occasional forest and mountain breaking the edge. Man, the sky really is super blue. She thinks to herself.
Some time later as she mixes a bag of MRE's, she sits down in front of a terminal that looked to be in good condition, and pushes the power button. The screen hums to life. A grin splits her face after hearing the old microsoft tune after a thousand years of being asleep.
"Alright computer, let's see how long ago David had awoken from his pod…" she mutters. Hopefully it wasn't too long ago… Maybe I can still find him. Yeah right, with my luck that number is gonna be in the hundreds. Instead she gets fifty. The number flashes on screen, like it was mocking her. She bangs the terminal in frustration, spilling some of the MRE's onto the floor. Fifty years! It was as if the universe was mocking her. Fifty years was short enough to give her hope, but yet at the same time he was going to be real old, and something probably ended up killing him before she even woke up.
Having gone through all her tears earlier, all she felt now was hollowness. She didn't dare get her hopes up, but she swore she would at least try and find him, or whatever's left of him. But first things first. She mentally checks off what's working and not working. Lights for the most part are fine, but the elevator is screwed. Environmental control threw in the towel around the same time that David woke up. So that's fifty years of decay clinging to the place. Some of the non military vehicles are gonna have a rough time trying to just function in the first place. But the military grade stuff were built to last, and Amelia had set her sights on a particular F-16.
It was currently sitting in the underground hangar, and was the only vehicle that wasn't crushed, or so corroded that the wings would just fall right off. She rips off the plastic covering on it, and meticulously runs a hand over its exterior, as if she was caressing a long lost lover. David may be gone but her love for flying sure is not. A few parts were in dire need of replacement however, and it was going to take at least a week to get the thing in flying condition, but she was confident it could be done.
For the next two days she cannibalized spare parts from other vehicles, replacement tires for the old, rotted ones. A revamped guidance system, and a complete cleanup of the interior later, and the thing looked to be in near perfect condition by the third day. But then Murphy's law kicked in.
Some time on her fourth day she was pulling out some wires that needed fixing when a slight tremor shook the abandoned base. Amelia cautiously looks around, wondering what that was. Dismissing it after a few seconds as a small earthquake, she returns back to her work. But then the ground shook again, and this time it was accompanied by an unearthly screech. She scrambles backwards in terror and makes a run for the entrance to the hangar. She didn't know what in the nine hells made that noise, but her imagination certainly filled it in for her. Images of radioactive sludge monsters leftover from the nuclear war flash through her head.
The floor shakes violently again just as she reaches the weapons locker. Sounds like something real big and mean is trying to get inside! She frantically rummages through the supply crates and arms herself with an M-16. As she rushes back out into the hallway a massive BOOM shakes the underground base again, before a large section of the ceiling just caves in. Amelia is thrown off her feet as a big something jumps through the hole and lands onto the pile of rubble, the floor plates buckling under the immense pressure.
She stares in shock as a thing slowly crawls out of the cloud of dust. Red scales scrape along the walls while spiked tentacles slither here and there, searching for prey. In the center a massive blob is seen being dragged along, a gaping tooth filled maw filling her ears with another inhuman scream. As it begins to close in on her, Amelia roars out her defiance and unleashes a storm of bullets straight into the monster… which do nothing at all. She dives for cover as the rounds ricochet off of the scales and bounce around the passageway.
Screw this! She thinks. Time to go! But before she gets a chance to even make a run for it a tentacle latches onto her ankles and drags her backwards, straight for its gaping maw. As it dangles her over it's mouth, she quickly unloads the entire magazine straight down the things throat. It roars in pain as it tosses Amelia like a rag doll down the hallway. She slams into the floor, blood pouring down her face. As the monster flails about in pain she picks herself up off the ground and limps for the hangar. Behind her she can hear the monster flailing about as it tries to catch her.
"Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck." Amelia crashes through the doors and into open space. She trips and falls, and as she scrambles to get back on her feet the doors behind her buckle under a massive hit. "FuckfuckfuckFUCK!" She yells as she slaps a helmet onto her face. She clambers up the side of the F-16 she had been working on for the past two days. Fingers dance over the controls, turning on the jet engines. The noise drowns out the roars of the monster, filling Amelia with a sense of comfort as her hands once again gripped the flight stick.
Please be in all that is holy don't let this thing blow up in my face. As she throttles down the runway the doors behind her explode into pieces, the massive red tentacle blob thing rushing straight for her. Amelia pours on the throttle in response. The runway is quickly replaced with a clear blue sky, the jet screaming away from the cave entrance she had left behind. The monster sits on the edge howling, angry that it's prey got away.
Amelia sinks into her seat in relief, a long, exaggerated groan emanating from her mouth. Nothing felt broken to her, but she was most definitely going to be feeling it all in the morning. She takes a look around the landscape, admiring the rolling hills of green and forestry, trying to get her bearings as to where she was at. BANG. Amelia is startled out of her thoughts as her jet began to make some really worrying sounds. A look behind her confirms her fears as she spots a trail of dark smoke spewing out from the back engine, accompanied by the rapidly dropping numbers on the altimeter.
Okay, time to go! She yanks on the ejection handle. Nothing happens. She frantically pulls it again. Nothing. I fucking knew I should have fixed this thing first! She grabs the flight stick and steadies her aircraft into a shallow dive. This was going to take all of her skill to land this thing and then some, fighter aircrafts were not meant for gliding. Sweat beads down her forehead as she watches as the altimeter spin closer and closer to zero. Then the ground filled her view and there was nothing but blackness.