I brought it up the next night, so to distract ourselves, we discussed our observations about everyone else. Most notably, Joe and Sally were staying on opposite sides of the room from one another when everyone was hanging out together. Sally seemed upset by it, while Joe was cold when they interacted. He hung out with Anthony and me most of the night. After some drinks, I was able to sleep that night.
Still, the clone idea circled my mind like a runner who never tires. Something hadn’t felt right since I woke up in the bunker, what if that was it? After a couple more days of the clone idea running through my head, I couldn’t take it anymore and found George and Willow to go exploring. I was excited to find new things and get my mind off possibly being a clone, but I hoped we would find where they were storing all the humans in stasis.
I didn’t get to hang out with George often, and Willow not as often as I’d like. I felt a kinship with her since we had been awoken together. We explored a new storage room. This time, it was full of sports equipment. Hockey sticks, soccer balls, helmets, hockey pucks. Despite all the equipment, there was nowhere for us to use it.
We still took souvenirs and stuff to play with, but we suspected there was an indoor field somewhere. Of course, the lack of space didn’t prevent us from playing in the halls as we passed each other if someone was carrying a ball. We continued to explore, squeezing through maintenance areas full of long tubes, steam, and humming machinery.
I made a map of our progress in a pocket-sized notebook and transferred that to a larger map for everyone else. The oversized cork board in the office where we had our meetings was the perfect place to pin up sheets of paper with maps of each level.
After a day of exploring and mapping, we drank and I played music for us, ad-libbing about spending the day mapping the facility. Eventually I stumbled upon a chorus and together, we sang, “life in the bun-ker!”
“It may be the end of the world, but the friends are all right!” I sang.
“Life in the bun-ker!” We sang together.
After a few of us parted ways for the evening, the rest of us followed suit. I was the last one out since I had to put away the instruments. I didn’t want them getting damaged. Since I was the one that had to clean everything up the next day anyway, I did it in the moment instead. It was no hassle to dump trash into the composter and shove the dishes into the washer. I wiped down the tables and straightened everything up. When I departed, I shut off the lights behind me. Teetering back to my room to lay down for the evening, I passed by Joe strolling back to his own room from the lavatory.
“Heya Pete, that was a lot of fun tonight.” Joe smiled, pointing as he shuffled by. He gave me a pat on the shoulder and the two of us came to a stop.
“Thanks Joe, I feel like I finally got on a roll there with some of that ad-libbing. Not much substance to it, but it was fun!”
“Yeah, but you’ve got a lot of substance, buddy, and that counts for a lot.” Joe was louder than he needed to be, and he leaned in close with the aroma of whiskey.
“Thanks, Joe. That means a lot.”
“Hey, Pete. How come you haven’t made a move on any of the ladies yet?”
“How do you know I haven’t?” I joked. We laughed, leaning on each other for balance. I patted Joe on the shoulder and Joe gently grabbed my face and kissed me. His tongue ran along my top lip and I pulled back, pushing him away.
“Woah, dude, what the hell?” I stumbled into the wall behind me.
“I thought we were having a good time tonight?”
“What? It was a fun night, but not… like this.”
“Aw, come on, Pete.” Joe went in for another kiss and I pushed him away, circling to get away from him and to my room.
“No. I don’t know what you think happened tonight, but… it didn’t. I’m not interested, okay? Goodnight.” I said calmly and sternly, stumbling away.
“Seriously? Pete… Come on, man. Don’t be a tease,” Joe called, but I didn’t respond or look back. Despite being a mix of emotions, after my head hit the pillow I was asleep within seconds.
The next day I awoke to a strange vibe from the others. When I arrived in the dining room, it was a disaster. I spun around to take in the mess, confused. One of the tables was even flipped upside down. I knew with absolute certainty I had cleaned up before going to bed.
“Had some fun after we all went to bed last night?” Joe asked from the table in the center, the only one clean enough for people to sit and eat, sitting with Laura. Even before I cleaned up, the room was not as messy.
“What?” I asked, still confused.
“Look, we understand that you’re the one that has to clean stuff up in the end, but don’t leave us with messes just because you’re feeling rowdy,” Joe said.
“Why do you think I did this?”
“You were the last one to bed last night,” Laura said. “We all went to bed, even Anthony, but you stayed and kept drinking.”
“I went to bed last because I stayed here cleaning up the room, like I do every night we drink.”
“Pete, please. We aren’t upset, we just want to make sure there isn’t a problem. This is like a cry for help. You’ve been drinking more. Are you okay?” Laura said.
“It doesn’t matter how much I have to drink, I clean up after. This happened after I went to bed.”
“Look, Pete. We’re not going to let you lie and blame someone else for something you clearly did. You’ve been drinking a lot and now you’re doing stuff like this? You’re on thin ice, buddy,” Joe said sternly.
“Thin ice? What are you going to do? Throw me outside? We can’t even get outside! So, what? I turn you down after you try to kiss me so you trash the dining room in a tantrum, Joe? Are you kidding me? What is this, middle school?”
“What the hell are you talkin’ about? You must have been really drunk last night, son,” Joe said. “Maybe you dreamed it, but I went to bed with everyone else. What do you even contribute? You haven’t even come up with any songs yet.”
“How am I supposed to come up with songs without memories?”
“I walked with Joe to his room last night, Pete. Please, just own up to what you did,” Laura pleaded.
“To hell with both of you.”
I stormed off. They called for me to come back, but I ignored them. At that point, cleaning was the last thing I wanted to do. I didn’t want to clean anything if it meant cleaning up a malicious mess made to frame me. Instead, I found George and Willow and we went exploring.
“What about that mess in the dining room?” George asked.
“I cleaned up the dining room before I went to bed like I do every other night. I’m not cleaning up someone’s tantrum.” George was not one for confrontation, so he went along with my desire to explore. Willow had a similar comment, and I gave her the same response, adding, “I just want to explore today. I’m not paying attention to any other nonsense trying to demand my attention.”
The second level had been almost completely explored, and I wanted a bigger adventure than opening what was most likely a room full of cleaning supplies and screws. We opened a sealed steel door and like last time, the stale air rushed past us.
We found a door with no special markings and slipped inside to flip on the lights. The room was not as large as the others, but like the rooms we had opened previously, the room was full of boxes. I had brought a crowbar with me for just such a probability, but when we looked up at the labels we were stunned to see knives, tasers, guns, swords, associated attachments and gear.
“Woah…” Willow said, a fist in the air for us to stop. “Pete, could you hand me that crowbar?”
I handed Willow the crowbar and she crept toward the nearby aisle of knives. She cracked open a box and shoved aside some styrofoam noodles. Slowly, she reached down and pulled out a huge knife in a sheath. Putting the crowbar down, she turned to face us and pulled the blade from its nylon sheath. Light glistened off the blade and she held it up to examine the blade. With an index finger, she gently touched the blade then pulled her hand back in a hurry.
“Shit!” Sucking her finger, she wiped the blade on her pants and put it back in its sheath.
There was a bright red first aid kit on the wall nearby and I rushed to get it. George nervously watched me hurry over with a bandage and some hydrogen peroxide. After a douse of the peroxide, Willow wrapped her finger in the bandage then strapped the knife to her belt.
“Okay, let’s figure out how to lock down this room because we can’t have people coming in here grabbing weapons. Nah, I ain’t havin’ that. And from now on, no exploring this level without me.” Reluctantly, we agreed. My heart was beating in my chest as if to warn me of the find. The room did not make me feel safe.
“I’m doing a lap.” Willow marched along the wall to circle the room with a dogged determination, sniffing for danger.
“This room makes me feel uncomfortable. If we’re supposed to start fresh, why would they give us a way in which to inflict violence upon one another? This doesn’t make sense.” I strolled along the wall, reading the labels and glancing at the box labels, twirling the crowbar.
“We might need them to defend ourselves against wild animals,” George followed closely behind me.
“That’s true.” We came upon an aisle labeled, ‘attachments’. “Let’s see what kind of stuff is in here.”
I strolled down the aisle and George followed. Mag pouches, laser scopes, then one of the boxes caught my attention, tactical flashlights.
“What on Earth is a tactical flashlight? Just a regular flashlight in camo?”
George laughed, but admitted he had no idea. We opened the box and pulled out a small scope to mount atop a rifle.
“Oh,” George said. “It’s a flashlight for your gun.”
“A tactical flashlight, well, would you look at that. Much more practical than what I imagined. You want a tactical flashlight?”
“Sure!”
I handed George the light, then we heard Willow calling us from the far side of the room. George shuffled off in a tragically slow run and I grabbed my own tactical flashlight, then closed the box. Hurrying to catch up, I was halted at another box marked, IR Tac Light.
Infrared, if I recalled correctly, meant night vision. I cracked open the box and grabbed one, slipping it into my pocket. I closed the box, then sprinted to catch up to George and Willow. George was standing in a doorway staring awe-struck at what was on the other side.
Connected to that room was a small factory of 3D metal-grade printers for making more bullets and equipment. It could also be used to create just about anything out of metal. They would be essential tools in rebuilding society.