Emerging into the atrium, we froze, blinded. The huge underground space, which had earlier drowned in darkness, was now flooded with the cold, flickering light of long fluorescent tubes. Their light revealed the scale of the structure: a high, upward-arching dome, massive columns, rows of sealed steel gates.

  Next to the already familiar sealed doors to the residential sector was another, less noticeable passage. The corridor behind it, as it turned out, led to the service zone, housing: the medicine storage, a hospital with an operating room and dental office, a library, a cafeteria, and a barbershop. At the far end should have been the communal showers and changing rooms.

  The first doors on the right led to the pharmacy storage. We approached and knocked cautiously. From behind the heavy steel door came weak, shuffling footsteps, but no one answered the knock.

  "Is anyone inside?" Sarah shouted.

  And immediately we heard a voice. Female, hysterical to the point of frenzy, breaking into laughter and crying simultaneously.

  "Yes! Oo-ooh! Have you finally remembered me?! Ha-ha-ha! At last! Hee-hee-hee!"

  From inside came a feverish buzzing—someone was entering a code on an electronic lock. But the door didn't open.

  "Tell us the code!" I shouted. "We'll try to open it from the outside!"

  But at that moment, the lock clicked, and the door screeched aside.

  In the doorway stood a young woman. Pale as chalk. She wore a crumpled, stained medical coat barely covering her body. Dirty, scratched knees peeked from under the hem. Unkempt blonde hair was matted and fell in tangled strands over her shoulders and onto her face, which had a sallow hue. Her eyes wandered, unfocused. It was clear from her appearance: though she didn't seem to have suffered from hunger, judging by her still-curvaceous form, long weeks in complete darkness and solitude hadn't been kind to her sanity.

  "Who are you?" she asked hoarsely and immediately giggled strangely, nervously.

  "How much service personnel were in the shelter at the moment of the catastrophe?" Sarah asked with her usual directness, ignoring the woman's question.

  "A full duty shift," the blonde began wiping tears with dirty hands, smearing black streaks across her cheeks. Seeing this, Sarah quickly found a roll of sterile bandage on a nearby shelf and handed it to her.

  "How many personnel were in the shift?" Sarah insisted.

  "Forty-three people," the woman replied and again erupted into the same hysterical, frightening giggle.

  "Do you know where they were located?"

  She nodded affirmatively, childishly.

  "Lead the way and show us," I requested, trying to speak softer, but impatience broke through in my voice. "Just close the door tightly behind you."

  She stepped into the corridor, hugging herself, and led us toward the hospital. Right at the entrance to the medical block, we saw something that froze the blood in our veins. Several skeletons. Picked clean, white, unnaturally contorted. Clothing had been torn off them, bones scattered, skulls rolled aside.

  "It was them!" the doctor-girl said with horror but without surprise, pointing a trembling finger. "It was them!... I heard them screaming. Wanted to open the door, but it wouldn't open for some reason... H-ha-ha!" she laughed through tears, and that sound was more terrible than any scream.

  "Be thankful the door didn't open," Sarah harshly interrupted her, shaking her head meaningfully. She approached the closed hospital doors and began knocking.

  No answer came. Irritated, she pushed the door with her shoulder. To our surprise, it yielded and opened a crack. Several small spiders leaped out from the gap and, blinded by the light, immediately scurried back into the darkness.

  "Searching here is pointless," I said quietly, looking into the black opening. "If anyone was hiding here, they're long gone. Take us to the other areas."

  The doctor-girl, still crying and giggling, nodded obediently and led us back through the atrium. We approached the massive doors of the international communications hub.

  "Here," she pointed and stepped aside, as if afraid to approach. "They're all here."

  Howard knocked on the steel door with his knuckles. Silence.

  "Enter '56821'," the girl said unexpectedly clearly.

  Howard quickly punched the numbers into the keypad. A click sounded, but the door didn't open. Hesitating briefly, he pushed against it with his shoulder. The door gave way with a low, protesting screech.

  Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  The lighting in the communications hub, apparently, was activated by the same switch as in the atrium. Light flooded the enormous space, comparable in size to a football field. Along the walls rose racks of gray, dusty communication equipment: early-warning radar stations, satellite terminals, switching stations, rows of server racks with long-extinguished blinking indicators. In the middle of the hall stood huge, wall-sized video screens, now dark and dead. Between the equipment were islands of comfort—soft sofas, leather armchairs, low tables. And everywhere, in huge planters, stood dried, blackened greenery—palm trees, ficus, ivy, once creating an illusion of an oasis.

  We cautiously advanced deeper, and then from behind one of the giant screens, two large dark creatures leaped out and, rustling with chitin, disappeared behind a nearby radar unit.

  "Seems there's nothing for us here either," Howard uttered gloomily, turning to us. And suddenly screamed in a choked, unnatural voice: "Aah!"

  A whole pack of spiders was approaching the doctor-girl, who had frozen in the middle of the hall. They poured out from under equipment racks, moving in quick, jerky bursts. And instead of running, she stood in place as if hypnotized, silently sobbing and emitting those same strange giggles.

  Without aiming, I raised my rifle and fired a short burst over her head. The front rows of spiders faltered; several individuals were torn apart, their bodies momentarily blocking the path for the rest. I immediately directed the spotlight beam at full power directly into the moving mass. The light, blindingly white and cutting, acted instantly. The spiders hesitated, recoiled, then scattered, hiding in the shadows of the equipment.

  Sarah ran to the petrified girl, grabbed her sleeve to pull her toward us, and suddenly froze herself, staring at a point somewhere deep in the hall.

  "What is it?" I asked, approaching her.

  "Skeletons," Sarah whispered, not looking away. She snapped out of it and dragged the woman toward us. "There are many of them," her voice was dull with horror. "Twenty. Or more..."

  "Now only the service personnel quarters remain," the doctor-girl said when we got out of the communications hub. She seemed to have come to her senses a bit, but her eyes were still empty. "If there's no one alive there either—then I'm the only one who survived." She sobbed again, and a giggle broke through the tears.

  We crossed the atrium again and turned into a short, inconspicuous dead-end corridor, at the end of which was a single unmarked door.

  We hadn't even knocked when, hearing our voices and footsteps, a rustle came from behind the door. The door opened slightly, just a centimeter. A weak beam from a pocket flashlight shot from the crack, illuminating our feet.

  "Finally!" a joyful but exhausted, weak voice rang out. The door swung open wider.

  Three men stood on the threshold. All three wore identical, once-protective-colored technical personnel coveralls with patches reading "Maintenance. Level 2." The canvas fabric hung on them like sacks, draping over incredibly thin, emaciated bodies. On their feet—tall army boots, now seeming unbearably heavy. But the most terrifying part—were their faces and heads. All three, even the one who looked younger, were completely gray. Not just graying—their hair and facial stubble were absolutely white as snow, sharply contrasting with dark, sallow skin.

  "Do you have... anything to eat?" the oldest-looking one, with gray eyebrows and deeply sunken cheeks, asked quietly, without any hope.

  "How many of you are here?" I asked, trying to speak calmly.

  "There were seven," he replied, and his voice trembled. "But now only three remain. Four... couldn't hold on. Went looking for food. We didn't want to let them, but they didn't listen..." He didn't continue, but we all understood, remembering the skeletons near the hospital.

  "Alright, later," I interrupted him, understanding that something else was more important now. "Show us where you have water."

  "Water is available in all rooms," the one who looked very young but was just as gray as the others answered. He gestured into the room. "Over there, the faucet near the utility room door."

  This time, Howard showed unexpected restraint. Sarah was the first to rush to the sink, then I. The water was ice-cold, tasteless, but clean. We drank greedily, with an uncontrollable avidity. Howard patiently waited his turn and only after us threw himself at the stream.

  The room held a heavy, nauseating smell—a mixture of human sweat, unwashed bodies, and something else that turned the stomach. I, barely quenching my thirst, left immediately, unable to bear it.

  When we all gathered in the corridor, I surveyed our strange group: three gray skeletons in baggy coveralls, the hysterical doctor-girl clutching a bandage roll to her chest, and us ourselves—dirty, exhausted, but armed to the teeth, with me wearing the huge aircraft spotlight on my chest. The sight was something else.

  "Now we need to decide what to do next," I said, and my voice sounded tired but firm. "The shelter is overrun. These creatures, the spiders, mutated from radiation, multiplied, and now there are probably thousands of them. On Earth's surface, nuclear winter is setting in, and survival there is impossible. Our only way out is to destroy the spider colony and stay here until we understand what's happening up there. But how do we do that?"

  "The food storage... is it intact?" the eldest survivor, Mr. Clyde, as he was later introduced, interrupted me. Hope sounded in his voice.

  "At least those in this wing are intact and sealed," Howard replied, nodding toward the atrium. "Though I don't know if there are other entrances to them..."

  "There are no other entrances," the doctor-girl said quietly but confidently. She approached Clyde and, to my surprise, her face momentarily lost its crazed expression. "Is this from hunger, Mr. Clyde?" something resembling compassion sounded in her voice for the first time.

  "From hunger, girl," he said with evident, almost paternal respect. "We were lucky that the duty personnel always bring some supplies and store them in the duty room, otherwise we'd have perished long ago."

  "My name is Sarah," she introduced herself, straightening up. "I'm a CBRN officer—Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Defense. I also know a thing or two about medicine. So without my permission, you can't eat or drink anything for now. The body after prolonged starvation might not withstand the strain..." she turned to the doctor-girl, who had begun giggling quietly again. "Do you have glucose in the storage? Need IV drips for intravenous nutrition."

  "Everything is there," she replied and giggled louder. "Only I'm afraid I don't know how well everything's preserved... the refrigerators haven't been working for a long time. Ha-ha-ha! Oooh!"

  Her laughter, so inappropriate and pained, sent shivers down my spine again.

  Consulting right there in the corridor, we concluded that the best course now was to return to the surface, to ATLAS. We needed to bring the exhausted survivors up, organize care for them, and assess our resources and capabilities. Sarah insisted on this especially fiercely.

  And it was she, as we later understood, who played the decisive role in giving us any chance of survival at all.