Bunker Buddies

Willow and I watched the orientation videos after we ate and met everyone. It was strange watching people talk about the end of the world so casually, smiling at the camera. Men and women of different shapes and sizes dressed in lab coats or casual attire, acting out scenarios and instructing us on how to live our lives and conduct ourselves in the facility.

Be courteous, considerate and respectful to others. Think more about others than you do yourself. Do not take any action that could damage the facility. Restricted areas will only open for people who are allowed inside to prevent tampering and those without expertise from tinkering with stuff they know nothing about. That one made a lot of sense. You wouldn’t want a janitor messing with the main electrical box. Since everyone was frozen ahead of time with their expertise and roles locked in place, that made it easy to delineate who was allowed where. Eventually this place would become obsolete as we settled the land.

Over the following weeks I cleaned the facility. I found myself frequently working with Willow and George, making a list of technical issues to look out for and maintenance that we would need to monitor. Willow was attentive and proactive, so we got along great. George was friendly and goofy, which meant we would sometimes get distracted from our work. Joe was friendly and talkative, often checking in and trailing into mindless conversation until he felt like moving along.

Anthony would retrieve soil samples once per week. There was a sturdy, automated robot outside which would retrieve the samples from the pin he would drop on the map and leave it in the tray for him. Only robots could survive outside. Like clockwork, every week he was disappointed by the results. Before long, he would celebrate the negative results with a shot of tequila.

Sally was always a friendly, chipper face who apparently had a romantic fling going on with Joe. They would sneak off together, but tried to keep things professional in front of everyone. Susan spent a lot of time in the library, reading old fiction novels. Laura was nice, and when she would talk about spirituality I would discuss it with her. Apparently, I had some knowledge of an old religion. We would both be surprised when I prattled off scripture from memory.

Once I had cleaned everything they had already opened up, I started exploring deeper into the facility. The stale wind that blew by me when I opened the steel door to the next level down was a sign to me it had been untouched by time since everything was locked up. There, I found massive storage rooms and spent my time exploring instead of cleaning.

After finding the lights, I took in the first massive room full of wooden crates stacked neatly on metal shelves three levels high, with large black labels stenciled onto them. There were labels for each section on the third level. I had to stand back to read them, and in doing so realized the front wall had a stencil with letters taller than me which read: Music.

Excitedly, I read through the aisle labels and boxes. String instruments including guitars, violins, ukuleles, and cellos. Further down were drums, pianos, saxophones, trumpets, xylophones, flutes, ocarinas, even didgeridoos. A crowbar made short work of the wooden crates and I carefully pulled each beautiful instrument from its box, spilling foam noodles on the floor.

One by one, I played through the instruments, even the ones that felt unfamiliar when I saw them. As long as you’re well versed in musical theory, you can play pretty much anything.

When I got to the electric guitar, I realized the plug looked like the sockets in the wall panels we used to communicate through the bunker. I grabbed a cable and rushed to the nearest panel. Sure enough, it plugged right in with a firm click. On the screen, I selected to broadcast to the entire bunker then plugged the connecting cable into it.

My fingers danced up the guitar shaft, running up the chords and back down again, then I let my fingers dig into music. This was the first time things felt right since I woke up. I lost myself in the music and shredded the guitar until I hit one final tune and throttled the whammy bar. It was then, breathing heavily over the guitar, that I realized my eyes were closed. Clapping erupted not five feet in front of me and my eyes shot open. Joe, Sally, Laura, George and Willow were there applauding the music.

“Woah, how’d you guys find me so fast?” I flipped some hair out of my face.

“The comms screen told us where it was coming from,” Willow said.

“Man, that was killer! I didn’t know you could play music,” Joe said.

“Yeah, that was great!” Sally followed up. George nodded silently in the back.

“I think I understand why I chose to be a janitor. I just wanted to play music!” I don’t remember having ever smiled as big as that moment.

“Hey you should put on a show!”

“That’d be great! I can play, uh…” I paused, finger in the air, staring off into space. There was a word on the tip of my tongue, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember it. I stuttered and tried making noises with my mouth, but none of them were right, and they didn’t flow into each other.

“Come to think of it, I don’t remember any songs either,” Sally said.

“Well, Pete, it looks like you’re the first musician of the new world! Daggum! The world’s your oyster, boy!” Joe boomed, hands open, pulling me into a firm embrace that lasted longer than was necessary.

“One more thing,” Willow said, a finger in the air. “No more solo exploration. If any of us opens a new area from now on, we go with at least one other person. You could have gotten hurt down here and we wouldn’t have known until we went looking.”

“You got it,” I agreed.

I could clean all day if I had no other responsibilities. Food and shelter were guaranteed, I just needed to contribute somehow besides making music. In fact, music made the days fly by. I would think about it all day, putting together tunes, mentally playing the new instruments I tried. There wasn’t much to do, either, so most of the time I could play music all day. Eventually I was putting words to the beats and rhythms I had been stringing together.

It wasn’t long before I found a keyboard and began mixing songs and beats, which would henceforth accompany my improvised guitar. Most nights we would drink and be merry while I played the guitar casually. I didn’t feel confident singing yet, but I would mumble the words to myself as I cleaned. Sometimes, I wasted too much time playing air guitar or working through the finger movements instead of cleaning.

The best part of the apocalypse, there were no deadlines and no reprimands. Or, so I thought.

Sometimes I would work myself into such a frenzy that I would stay awake all night. It seemed as if I was the only night owl. On one such night Sally dropped something in the kitchen, so I thought I’d keep her company since she was always cooking alone early in the morning. One time she slept in and Joe berated her for it until she was in tears. She cried while she cooked that day.

I told Joe that I thought the reaction was a bit harsh. He practically scolded me about the pressures of leadership, and that if any of us dropped the ball at the wrong time, we could all die, and our species depends on us surviving. I hadn’t thought about it that way. For carrying so much pressure on his shoulders, it was amazing that Joe was so light hearted. He was a better leader than I gave him credit for, even if he had the capacity to fly off the handle. Still, I made an effort after that to make sure I let Sally know how much I appreciated her and her cooking every day.