I do not know how many of us are left alive on Earth. Now it doesn't matter at all. The crux is that we ended up using all the achievements of our civilization against ourselves. I have met and spoken with many: everyone saw a crime being plotted against humanity, but pretended nothing was happening. Why?
Was it because open struggle seemed too hard a trial for them? No, it was simpler and more base. Everyone was afraid that taking a stand would affect their career, their stability, their children's well-being. They feared persecution on social media, accusatory articles in the media where they could be branded a threat to freedom of speech, even though that very freedom had long since turned into a monologue by a narrow handful of people who had seized control of all information channels. Any opinion contrary to their plans was harshly suppressed and drowned in censorship. Everyone hoped someone else would stick their neck out. And even when they were openly, brazenly deceived, they did not protest, but on the contrary, clapped and shouted "hurrah!"
I am writing these lines in the cold cabin of a vehicle that has saved our lives more than once. Around me is a handful of equally tormented and unhappy people, all of whose desires and dreams have narrowed down to one simple, animal urge—just to survive. I am trying to find those responsible for the world collapsing, but it's impossible. We are all to blame. Every single one of us.
The temperature on Earth was dropping rapidly. Already by the end of November, the frosts had reached thirty-five degrees below zero. But the heating was still working in the ATLAS cabin, so it was tolerable for us. Much more oppressive was the constant, heavy darkness outside the viewports. Even during the hours that our clocks considered midday, beyond the glass reigned impenetrable, thick blackness, and any work outside was impossible without a powerful spotlight. Ten men and women in the cramped cabin, tormented by uncertainty and fear, spent their time in silence or in quiet, fragmented reminiscences of a past that no longer existed.
Trying to conserve the last remnants of energy, we kept the heating at a minimum. The main warmth in the cabin now came from our bodies and the hot air we exhaled. When the accumulated carbon dioxide began to cause headaches and drowsiness, we turned on the air purification and ventilation system—it was working with increasingly long and worrying interruptions. Apparently, there was less and less oxygen in the poisoned atmosphere outside, and I approached the control panel with growing dread, where sensor readings painted an increasingly threatening picture.
"…Radioactive fallout! Radioactive fallout! Radioactive fallout!"—the alarming message flashed more and more frequently on the screen, blinking a bloody red.
I walked over to Colonel Daniels, who was half-reclining in his seat, wrapped in a blanket, and asked in a whisper:
"What does this message mean, exactly? What's happening outside right now?"
"Radioactive fallout?" he turned his head toward the screen with effort, and something like surprise and an old, deep sorrow flickered in his tired eyes. "Heard the term… But don't remember the details. But I know one thing for sure, it's bad, Ork. Very bad."
Unsatisfied with the answer, I headed toward Sarah. She definitely should have known—it was part of her specialty.
"What do we do, Captain? There's radioactive fallout outside."
Sarah silently walked to the nearest viewport, wiped the glass with her sleeve, and peered for a long time into the impenetrable gloom.
"Dangerous stuff," she finally muttered, and her voice sounded tired. "It's not just snow or rain. It's dust, fine droplets, ice crystals—everything falling from the sky—saturated with radionuclides. Everything that was thrown into the stratosphere by the explosions is now settling back down. Full protection is needed. Gas masks, sealed suits, decontamination after every exit. But we don't have any of that… so we at least mustn't go out without the rubber raincoats in the cargo bay. And scarves. And later, perhaps, we'll find special clothing and gas masks in the shelter."
She turned away from the glass and looked at me.
"What's the temperature now?"
"Minus thirty-five," I replied. "And there's a sticky, heavy fog. As soon as you step out, your throat starts to tickle, you start coughing… and there's nothing to breathe."
The doctor-girl from the shelter sat in her seat the whole time, pressed into the backrest. She endlessly, with a sort of manic persistence, unbraided and rebraided her light, tangled hair, whispering the same thing: "I asked him to dress her warmer… He didn't listen to me." And from time to time, her body shuddered, and she emitted that same short, hysterical giggle that sent a chill down the spine. Her psyche, broken by long solitude and horror in the darkness, was slowly falling apart before our eyes.
I grew uneasy from this monotonous muttering and laughter. I got up and went into the cargo bay, seeking distraction.
At the small folding table, under the light of a dim energy-saving lamp, three technicians we had rescued in the shelter were drinking tea and talking animatedly but quietly: Clyde, Stanley, and Baz. But as soon as I appeared in the doorway, the conversation abruptly stopped. They fell silent and looked at me with a mixture of guilt and defiance.
"Why have you secluded yourselves here?" I asked, involuntarily glancing at the refrigerators lining the walls with our meager supplies. "Plotting a conspiracy against the common pot?"
My clumsy joke, which sounded more like suspicion, caused annoyance to flash across their faces.
"The guys are upset, Ork," said Stanley, gesturing with his chin toward his comrades. His voice was calm, but there was tension in it. "The storerooms down below, in the shelter, are packed to the brim with food. Canned goods, grains, freeze-dried meals—enough food for a century. And we're sitting here like we're on a diet, counting every can."
"And the systems are better there," joined in Baz, the youngest and most hotheaded. "Powerful ventilation, reliable air filtration, warm and dry. And here? We're breathing what we've exhaled, and freezing if the kettle isn't boiling. There—the shelter is right there, just nearby. And here…"
"Everything you say is true," I agreed, sitting down on the edge of a crate near them. "But Sarah insists you all still haven't recovered from exhaustion. And that without your help, without knowledge of the layout, we can't deal with these creatures. But first we need to clear the shelter. Opening the storerooms now, giving in to a fleeting feeling of hunger while the shelter is infested—that means signing our own death warrant."
"I, for example, feel fine already," Baz clenched his fists. His face, still young but aged by what he'd been through, was tense. He looked questioningly at Clyde, the oldest of the three and, apparently, the unofficial leader of this trio. Everything depended on him. Whether they would work with us as a team or each for themselves.
Clyde silently sipped his tea, his gray eyebrows furrowed. Finally, he put down his mug.
"We know every nook, every technical niche in that underground place," he said thoughtfully, not looking at anyone. "If necessary… we could temporarily flood the shelter. The emergency drainage system would then pump the water out along with that… filth."
"Excellent!" came a sarcastic voice from the passage. Howard was standing in the doorway of the cargo bay. "And in doing so, you'll guarantee to disable the filtering units, flood the generators, ruin the lion's share of the food, and as a bonus—kill the backup batteries. A brilliant plan. Simply suicidal."
"Oh, come on!" Stanley waved his hand irritably. "You don't know our shelter!" He pronounced the word "our" with such emphasis, as if we, who had rescued them, were outsiders here.
Howard stepped inside, his face serious.
"How long did you work at 'North Clark'?" he asked, addressing Clyde directly.
"Me? From the very first day of excavation work," the old man answered with pride.
"And how many times did you participate in full-scale sealing and emergency drills?"
"That doesn't matter now," Baz cut in sharply.
"No, it does!" Howard's voice became hard, carrying the conviction of a man who had seen too much. "I participated in such drills three times at different facilities. And three times, the so-called complete, absolute sealing failed. Water found cracks—through ventilation shafts, through cable entries. Food storerooms that were supposed to stay dry ended up flooded. Each time after such 'successful' drills, they had to completely replace filters, batteries, and bring in new food supplies." He saw disbelief in their eyes and added more quietly, but weightily: "Ask Colonel Daniels. He commanded at least two of those inspections. He knows."
A heavy silence fell in the bay. The flooding plan was clearly a gamble.
"Flooding is out of the question," I said, putting an end to it. "But we might have another way out."
It became clear to me that we couldn't postpone the serious talk any longer. Discontent and fear could split our already fragile group. I went to the door to the cabin and invited Sarah to join us.
When she entered, warily looking everyone over, I began:
"Our friends insist on immediately returning to the shelter and opening the storerooms. The situation is heating up. It's time to bring everyone up to speed. And, Sarah," I looked her straight in the eyes, "it's time to show what you've been so carefully keeping in your sealed container."
But Sarah didn't let me finish. She shook her head sharply, almost frightened.
This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.
"Sit down," I said, no longer asking but ordering. My tone, always restrained until now, now sounded unexpectedly rough and commanding. "And please, don't squirm."
This puzzled her. She slowly sat down on the crate indicated to her.
"According to my instructions and oath, I am not authorized to entrust this item to anyone except direct superiors or in case of a direct threat to my life while performing my task," she stated precisely, but in her voice, alongside the usual stubbornness, there was a note of uncertainty.
"Those who gave you those instructions, Sarah, died long ago. They're gone." In my heart, I felt sorry for this woman, locked in a cage of duty to the dead. "I relieve you of this responsibility!" I said, and that same commanding note sounded in my voice again, making everyone straighten up. "Here and now—I am making the decision."
"You… don't trust me?" Tears welled up in her eyes, but they were not tears of offense, but of a terrible internal conflict.
"What? No! More than anyone," I tried to soften my tone. "But we really have no other way out. Either we all find a solution together, or we start snapping at each other over the last can of stew. And then the end will come faster than from the spiders."
Sarah lowered her head, her shoulders shuddering.
"It's a terrible risk…" she whispered. "One wrong move, one micro-crack… That's enough to poison everything in the storerooms. This is for the most extreme case, when there's no choice left…"
"What do you suggest then, daughter?" Clyde asked softly, almost paternally. And it seemed to me that this simple word "daughter" touched something in the most protected part of her.
Sarah took a deep breath, rubbed her temples—her habitual gesture of deep concentration—and squinted, looking at the emptiness before her.
"I was supposed to carry it out myself," she began, and her voice regained that metallic firmness. "It was my task. But…" she paused. "One thing I know for sure. Until we destroy this infestation, until the threat is eliminated, I will not allow the storerooms to be unsealed. Under any circumstances. Understand? None! Otherwise, we will all perish, simply by eating poisoned food."
"We can't sacrifice what's in our refrigerators either," I preempted her possible suggestion to just feed everything to the creatures.
"Then…" she spread her hands helplessly, "if you don't listen to me and go down there with weapons, you will die. There are too many of them, thousands. And without you, we will die too. But what's in the container is even worse. The poison… it works at a distance."
"Biological weapon?" Howard breathed out with fear turning into horror. He recoiled as if from fire. "Are you crazy?! Do you want to infect the entire shelter with plague?"
"Not biological," Sarah corrected him quickly. "It's… something else."
She got up and silently went out into the cabin. A minute later she returned, carrying in both hands that same steel, inconspicuous container that was always with her. She placed it on the table before us with the utmost care, as if dealing not with an object, but with a sleeping, venomous snake.
The container was black, matte, cylindrical, with a sealed valve on the end and barely noticeable, stamped international symbols of the highest degree of danger on the lid. Her fingers, cold and steady, found a hidden latch and turned it. There was a faint but distinct click.
The lid didn't open immediately. First, a quiet, long, piercing hiss was heard—the venting of the inert gas that maintained internal pressure. The sound was thin, unpleasant, like the hiss of something ancient and malevolent.
Inside, nestled in a recess of dark gray, dense foam, lay a device. It looked like an anachronism, a toy of a mad watchmaker, transported directly from the middle of the twentieth century. Its casing resembled bombs from that era—streamlined, oval, devoid of any digital displays. On the side was embedded a mechanical timer with an analog dial under a glass dome. Thin steel hands were frozen at the "12:00" mark. Around the circumference of the casing, several compact detonators, resembling medical syringes without needles, were neatly screwed in.
But the heart of the device, its central element, was a sphere. Small, slightly larger than a billiard ball, made of dark green, almost black thick glass. Inside it, something heavy, oily, lazily shimmered at the slightest movement. The liquid caught the meager lamplight and cast strange, sickly reflections on the walls and faces—colors of oxidized copper, rotting foliage, and something else, indescribable.
"Yes," Sarah's voice suddenly became flat, emotionless, like an automaton reading a protocol. She spoke without taking her eyes off the sinister sphere. "It is a weapon. A weapon of guaranteed, total destruction in a confined volume. You've probably all guessed it by now."
She slowly raised her gaze, sweeping it over our pale, frozen faces.
"Life in a shelter during a protracted apocalypse, which could last decades or even centuries, is not just salvation. It is a quiet, methodical stress. A vise squeezing you from all sides. No matter how vast the underground complex—it is a confined space. Steel and concrete. The air you breathed yesterday will pass through your neighbor's lungs tomorrow. The same view on the pseudo-window screens. The same work. The same food. Year after year. A year. Five years. Ten. For the rest of your life."
She took a chair and sat at the table opposite us, placing a palm on the container lid as if shielding its contents from prying eyes.
"Under such conditions, the human psyche is the most unreliable element of the system. Rebellions, panic are possible. But what is much more likely is a quiet, creeping, collective madness. Paranoia. Mass hysteria. And one not-so-fine day—a massacre. And the use of firearms, grenades, and explosives in a confined volume… that is guaranteed death for everyone. Just slightly faster and more spectacular than a slow extinction next to the mad."
She lightly touched the cold glass sphere with her finger.
"For this eventuality, a protocol existed. 'The final solution to the containment problem.' Only the highest command of a specific shelter knew about it. And to carry it out, one NBC Defense officer—Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense—was embedded in each such complex. In 'Bastion Toyabe'… that officer was me."
"In the event of an uncontrollable, internal threat—be it a mutiny, an epidemic of madness, or, as in our case, a biological hazard—the loyal personnel and those who retained their sanity were to take refuge in special sealed compartments: the command center, the isolated medical unit, the long-term storage depots. And then… hide this device in the central ventilation hub and activate it."
Her description was dry, merciless, like a line from a technical manual.
"This contains the nerve agent VX. Modification 'Persistent.' This is death for any living creature with a nervous system within 30-60 seconds. When inhaling the aerosol, one deep breath is enough. Symptoms: instantaneous constriction of pupils to a pinpoint, unbearable headache, uncontrollable salivation, convulsions. Death occurs from paralysis of the respiratory muscles and heart. Without the specific antidote, which we do not have, the chance of survival is zero."
She paused, letting these words sink in.
"The ventilation systems of 'North Clark'-level shelters have a hidden, priority protocol. After activating the device and the timer, the ventilation in forced mode would pump the gas through all living sectors, corridors, technical compartments within a few hours. Destroying all life indiscriminately. And after 72 hours… a special catalytic neutralizer, built into the chemical formula of the agent itself, would break down the remaining gas into simple, safe compounds. The same ventilation would expel them outside as exhaust air. The shelter would remain sterile. Clean. Ready for… re-population by survivors."
A tomb-like silence settled in the cargo bay, broken only by the steady, expressionless hum of the heater. We looked at this small, elegant death machine and understood the whole cynical, monstrous calculation behind its creation.
Sarah rubbed her temples again, and now she was speaking not as an officer reporting on a device, but as a person trying to find a way out.
"But our shelter is not in standard operating condition. There's no guarantee we can run the central ventilation at full power, which means the forced pumping and subsequent purification protocol either. We can't just activate this and hope the gas will spread throughout the entire huge shelter on its own. We need to gather all the creatures together, in one place, and only there activate the mechanism. That way we'll guarantee to destroy most of the colony and minimize the risk of spread."
"You saw how these monsters pounce on food?" she asked, looking at me.
"Yes, I saw," I replied, still under the impression of her story. "They tear off pieces and scurry off into the darkness to eat alone. I observed it down below, near the waste storage."
"Exactly. But if a spider is contaminated, and traces of the agent remain on its chitin or in its stomach, and then it gets into a storeroom… it's the end for all of us. The entire food supply will be poisoned."
"What do you suggest then?" Clyde and Baz asked almost simultaneously.
"Lure them. To one place. For example, the atrium—the largest open space. But for that, we need very strong, attractive bait. Lots of bait. Finely chopped, with a strong smell, well-mixed…" She thought for a moment. "We can place the detonator inside this mass. And when they gather from all over the shelter for the feast… either the timer will activate, or in the crush, one of them will trigger the detonator. The explosion will create an aerosol cloud right at the epicenter of the gathering."
"Minced meat!" Howard suddenly exclaimed. "Meat mince! Its smell is strong, and it can be mixed with blood, with fat… That would be perfect bait!"
And this seemed to be the only time Sarah agreed with him, even nodding in approval.
"Exactly, minced meat. From everything we have in our refrigerators. But I alone will set up the device, prepare the bait, and activate the timer. Understand? No one else is to come near."
She fell into thought again, but then her face clouded.
"None of this will work," she whispered.
"Why not?" we chorused.
"Because even after their death, the danger won't disappear. The corpses. Thousands of corpses soaked in poison will be scattered throughout the shelter. They will decompose, and toxins could get into the air, even into the water. We need not just to kill them, but to immediately collect the corpses and completely destroy the remains."
"Then we'll gather them in one place and burn them," Stanley suggested.
"We could use the incinerator at the waste treatment station as a crematorium," Clyde added thoughtfully. "And then seal or block that compartment permanently."
"You seem to have dealt with computers and complex systems?" Clyde suddenly addressed me, and a spark of hope glinted in his eyes. "Next to the treatment station, behind an airtight door, is the main control panel for the life support systems of the entire shelter. Ventilation included. The room is absolutely airtight, with its own filtration system. Technical personnel were not allowed there. Only the duty engineer and shelter command. Perhaps that is the very 'shelter within a shelter' Sarah spoke of."
"Why have you kept silent about this until now?" I asked, nearly hugging the old technician in my joy. "That's our salvation!"
It was hard for me to immediately imagine how we could use that control panel, how to handle the controls. But I was sure of one thing: if there were computers and interfaces there, I could figure it out. Working with complex systems and artificial intelligence was my specialty.
I quickly formulated a plan:
"First: we process all the meat from our supplies into mince. Everything to the last gram, we're risking it all. We have only one chance; if it fails, we won't last long on the surface anyway. Second: Sarah prepares the device, packs it in several layers of airtight plastic, and we place it in the center of this… bait. Third: we use our tent as a stretcher, carry it all down to the atrium. Fourth: set up the bait, camouflage it, and activate the timer. And fifth, most importantly: while the spiders are occupied with our bait, we all penetrate that sealed command center. From there, if possible, I'll try to take control of the ventilation, to clean the air in the atrium as quickly as possible after detonation and, perhaps, even initiate the forced pumping protocol for the shelter. Everything else… the ventilation will do for us."
