Another zone included workshops and technical compartments, workspaces with installed machinery and repair units, and still-sealed food warehouses and the weapons arsenal.
Another shelter zone housed the medical storage, hospital, library, cafeteria, communal showers, and a small gymnasium we hadn't noticed during the initial inspection.
And finally, the residential zone. Until now, we had been concerned with the integrity of the warehouses and the power plant, so we hadn't looked into the residential part—it had remained sealed the entire time.
But now, believing the threats were over, and with only the quarantine established by the doctor for the final removal of gas residue preventing us from opening the food warehouses, we decided to inspect the shelter's residential zone. Despite the intense hunger—the few remaining scraps of food we had brought with us had long been eaten during our siege by the spiders in the control room—we decided to distract ourselves and walk through the living quarters.
Tearing off the seals and entering the access code on the metal gate, we found ourselves before a corridor of astonishing cleanliness, laid with a dark green carpet runner. At regular intervals in the walls on the left and right, thick metal doors were visible. Each door had a keypad lock, and above it—a carefully placed plaque with the reminder of the standard code, which residents could change if they wished.
We approached the first room and entered the code. The heavy steel door opened surprisingly easily, and we entered.
A small entrance hall greeted us with neatness and order: a panel with temperature and ventilation indicators hung on the wall, next to it a coat rack, and beneath it built-in drawers for shoes and small items. The floor was covered with a durable, wear-resistant material that didn't squeak and was easy to clean. The light, softly falling from ceiling lamps, was enough to immediately see all the details of the room.
To the right were the toilet and bathroom, lined with light, matte tiles. The faucets were ordinary, with a familiar mechanism for adjusting hot and cold water, but conveniently designed to not waste extra energy. Stanley checked the water: the hot water reached the right temperature immediately, and cold water mixed in without issue. Everything worked correctly, with no signs of malfunction. Towels hung neatly folded on the walls, and a small shelf with basic personal hygiene items was installed before the mirror.
We entered the room itself. It was five by five meters in size—obviously designed for four people. Beds stood along the walls, with mattresses allowing for firmness adjustment, each with a neatly folded blanket and pillow. Nearby were small clothing lockers and nightstands with drawers for personal belongings. In the corner of the room was a work area: a desk with a video communication screen and a small keyboard, a computer terminal, several sockets, and charging stations. Built-in panels with temperature, humidity, and lighting indicators lined the walls, controllable from the panel or ordinary switches.
The ceiling had soft-light lamps, and the floor was carpeted for comfortable barefoot walking. Small niche panels along the walls hid speakers for sound reproduction and spaces for charging phones and other personal devices. Everything was thought out so that each item was in its place and didn't interfere with others.
After inspecting everything, we went back to the entrance hall, from which a door led to the kitchen. The kitchen was small, with a simple electric stove, refrigerator, and built-in work surfaces. Standard dishes were on the shelves, everything neatly arranged, with nothing superfluous.
The furnishings gave the feeling that space was used economically but comfortably: rooms weren't overloaded with unnecessary details, everything was calculated for long-term life underground. Every closet, table, and shelf showed that the shelter was designed for comfort and functionality, without excess, but with maximum practicality.
Then we exited into the common corridor and, entering the code, went through the door opposite. Here the setting differed greatly from the previous apartment. A large oval mirror with soft contour lighting was installed on the wall immediately upon entry, next to a coat rack made of dark composite material. The floor was covered with a dense plush runner.
The bathroom and toilet were finished with panels resembling natural stone; the faucets were heavy, metal, with a warm matte gleam. Above the sink was a mirror panel with a built-in display. On the shelf, bottles of expensive hygiene products were neatly arranged, an electric razor in its charging station, personal care kits in individual cases.
All towels were neatly folded in a stack, and sealed packages with creams and hygiene kits lay in convenient pull-out drawers.
Beyond the bathroom was the kitchen. An induction stove, built-in refrigerator, coffee machine, a set of expensive dark glass and metal tableware. The work surface was clean, with no signs of use; everything was connected and ready.
"Not bad," said Sarah, running her fingers over the smooth panel finished to resemble an oak countertop. "Everything in our shelter was much simpler."
"Interesting, who ordered all this and who were they planning to house here?" Clyde looked around. "I wouldn't mind living here."
"Move in and live," I said, opening the door of a wall-mounted kitchen cabinet. Inside, neatly arranged as if on display, were packages of tea, coffee and cocoa capsules. In the neighboring cabinet was a built-in mini-bar refrigerator: all four shelves were tightly packed with bottles of vintage wines and cognacs, each in its own slot.
Clyde was already reaching for one of the bottles, but Sarah stopped him sharply.
"Not now," she said calmly but firmly. "After prolonged fasting, it's very harmful."
After inspecting everything, we passed into the living rooms—there were three, and all, thanks to thoughtful lighting, were bright and spacious. The walls and ceilings were covered with three-dimensional waterproof panels, and the floor with thick, soft carpeting. Furniture and appliances were selected neatly, without excess, but of quality and clearly not cheap.
Baz, Emily, and Kyla approached the wall-mounted media panel. One of them touched the touch panel—and the room filled with quiet, smooth music.
"Now that's a thing," Baz drawled, clicking his tongue. The girls silently nodded, glancing at each other. Since the young man had appeared among us, the girls had somehow subtly transformed and agreed with him in everything.
"And who will live here?" Envy was audible in Howard's voice.
"You can too, Lieutenant," I replied indifferently.
But then Sarah intervened.
"On one condition: not to jump from one apartment to another."
"Why's that?" the lieutenant grew wary.
"No one to clean up after you," Sarah tossed at him curtly. It was a clear hint at the lieutenant's untidiness.
We exited again into the corridor and realized that the doors on the right led to one-room accommodations like dormitories for several people, and on the left—to large, comfortable ones for privileged residents. There were exactly one hundred ten of each type of apartment.
Leaving the residential zone back into the atrium, we immediately felt the smell of burned spider corpses spreading through the shelter—acrid, sweetish, and nauseating.
"That's through the ventilation vents," Stanley determined, wrinkling his nose. "Let's go to the control room and turn on all the ventilation at once."
We were already approaching the room where we had stayed the whole time the spiders "feasted" outside. Stanley was about to open the door when, to our great surprise, from the corridor of the zone where the hospital was located, four small spiders ran out and raced across the atrium towards the technical rooms. Baz with his hunting shotgun reacted instantly. Firing a buckshot blast from both barrels simultaneously, he blew the creatures to pieces. The roar of the shot rolled deafeningly through the atrium.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
"What is this!" Sarah exclaimed indignantly. "Haven't we finished with all of them yet?!"
But I didn't share her indignation. I was impressed by Baz's actions and immediately decided—if a shotgun could be found in the shelter's arsenal, I would certainly take one for myself. It was obvious the shelter still required thorough clearing.
But then a gnawing hunger pang hit me so sharply in the pit of my stomach that I bent over from sudden, sharp pain.
"The main thing is we destroyed all the large specimens; the small ones don't count. When we've eaten and rested, we'll open the arsenal and conduct a raid. We'll inspect and clear every corner. But now we can safely open the warehouses! I'm about to die of hunger," I said in a commanding tone, straightening up and pressing my palm against my stomach.
"But first we need to make sure that..." Sarah began, but I didn't let her finish.
"You saw how Baz dealt with the spiders. We'll post him to guard the entrance. We'll take some supplies and lock everything back up."
Making further plans like this, we approached the doors of the warehouse areas. Behind the first door, judging by the signs, was the vegetable and fruit warehouse. We quickly entered the lock opening code; an alarm immediately activated, and the doors automatically swung open.
"Please stay by the door," I addressed Baz, and he nodded understandingly, took his shotgun in hand, and began scanning the corridor.
Inside was another sealed door. I tore off the seal—and the massive panels slid apart with a low hiss.
Upon opening the doors, the lights inside automatically came on. Before us opened a spacious room with high ceilings and rows of metal shelving extending deep into the warehouse. Crates stood in neat stacks, each with markings, dates, and colored condition indicators. In the air, there was a chill and a faint, damp smell of plant matter.
All of us, except Sarah, exhausted and starving, rushed to the nearest shelves. The crates contained fruits and vegetables—choice, large, clearly grown under closed agricultural programs. Especially stunning were the strawberries: huge, uniform, covered with a thin protective layer of a special paste for long-term storage in case of cooling system failure or accident. Under normal conditions, it was supposed to be removed first with a special solution, but we were so hungry this delay was unacceptable. Moreover, we hadn't eaten fruit or berries for so long that the sight of beautiful, bright fruits simply wouldn't allow us to restrain ourselves.
We scraped off the top layer of protective paste with our hands, then wiped the fruits on our sleeves and, not heeding Sarah's warnings, bit into the juicy pulp of the berries. Long-uncleaned teeth ached, gums bled, but it was impossible to stop. Juice ran down our happy faces right onto our long-unshaven chins.
"Don't rush to eat your fill," I said, looking over the seemingly endless rows and shelves. "There must be something else tasty here."
And indeed, further along the warehouse, we found containers with citrus fruits: oranges, lemons, grapefruits. And many varieties of apples. Many were in individual packaging, and some were in hermetic cassettes with moisture absorbers.
"Let everyone take as much as they can carry," I warned. "Just don't throw anything away."
"So as not to leave food for the spiders," Sarah added, still standing guard.
The warehouse was divided into four sectors, each two hundred to two hundred fifty square meters. The first sector—fruits, the second—fresh vegetables. The third held containers with pickles, fermented products, and vacuum-packed greens. The fourth was completely packed with canned goods—from simple vegetable ones to military long-term storage rations marked "emergency supply of the United States government."
"All this needs to be sorted urgently," said Howard, inspecting some crates. "Some vegetables and fruits have started to rot. If we don't separate all the spoiled ones right now, everything will start rotting at once."
I quickly estimated the volume of work and the number of people.
"That's at least a month's work," I said. "But we'll manage."
"What about the drones? They have manipulators. Couldn't they be programmed for this work?" Sarah began.
"They'll manage in a week," I cut her off. "I'll write the program tomorrow."
Collecting some fruit for Baz, who was standing guard outside, we locked the doors with the electronic lock again and headed to the next warehouse. The inscription on the information plate read: "Freezer Storage. Perishable Goods."
As soon as we entered inside, it became immediately clear—things were much worse here. The floor was covered with an uneven icy crust. Once, deep freezing had been maintained here: meat, fish, semi-finished products stored at a stable sub-zero temperature. After the power outage, the products began to thaw, meltwater flooded the floor, and after the cooling system was restarted, it froze again, covering the floor with ice like a huge, uneven skating rink.
Containers with frozen meat and semi-finished products were covered with an icy crust, and the packaging was deformed. Determining the condition of the contents without opening them first was impossible.
"We can't manage here with drones alone," Howard said grimly, tapping the ice with his foot. "The fish and meat are most likely completely spoiled. Everything needs to be sorted by hand."
"What about the canned goods?" Stanley asked hopefully.
Howard lifted a can of turkey paté and pointed to its swollen bottom.
"Spoiled. But maybe something can still be saved if we act urgently. But there's nothing more for us to do here now."
The next warehouse was packed with sacks of flour, cardboard packages with pasta, buckwheat and rice cereals, which were packaged in hermetic cellophane bags. In a row stood huge hermetic containers with automatic valves, containing sacks of sugar in protective shells. Further—rows and shelves with chocolate, dry mixes, soup concentrates, boxes of instant noodles with bright stickers, and vacuum-packed candies.
But the fifth warehouse turned out to be the most valuable.
As soon as its doors opened, the dense, warm smell of smoked meats struck the nostrils of the hungry people. Here, the inner walls of the storage, treated with special materials, allowed for maintaining a special storage regime independent of the refrigeration units. On high and endlessly long rows of shelves, in individual hermetic packages, hung sausages of various sorts, smoked and cured pork hams, ducks, geese, chickens and turkeys, cured and smoked fish, vacuum packs with veal of such sizes it seemed like a whole cow had been stuffed and smoked inside. Each package had markings, a shelf life, and a hermeticity indicator.
"Now this is what I call extra class," Uncle Clyde tore off one of the packages with smoked turkey fillet, sniffed it, and grunted with satisfaction. "That's it. The hunger strike is over."
Even Sarah remained silent this time.
After inspecting the last warehouse, we exited into the corridor and decided to end the more detailed inspection for today. Everyone was very tired, and the stress after spending over twenty-four hours in the shelter control room was making itself felt more and more. We needed proper rest. After so many days spent on the surface in nuclear winter conditions, we dreamed of warmth and proper food.
Returning to the residential zone, we dispersed to our chosen apartments. I hadn't planned to occupy a large space, but seeing that everyone else had chosen comfort, I also settled in a so-called luxury suite.
This suite was the ninth down the corridor from the entrance to the residential zone. Besides a luxurious kitchen, a separate living room, and bedroom, it also had a separate study—a workspace equipped with everything necessary for work: a large, genuine wood desk with a built-in console, drawers with various stationery, a desktop computer terminal, a dictaphone with automatic transcription and printing function.
The first thing I did was run hot water in the bathroom. By my calculations, about six weeks had passed since the catastrophe—two months at worst. That was enough time for me not to recognize myself in the mirror. Beard, temples, even eyebrows had noticeably grayed. Hair, combed back and tangled into dirty braids, hung on my shoulders; from dirt and grease, it was impossible to immediately tell what color it had been originally.
I squeezed shaving cream onto the brush. The air in the bathroom immediately filled with the clean, sharp scent of the cream. Slowly, without rushing, I shaved off the beard and mustache and, using a built-in electric razor with a trimmer, shortened my hair. And only when the familiar face of Professor Ork Ackerman finally emerged in the mirror, did I move to the bathtub.
I enjoyed the bath for a long time. Hot water washed away the fatigue, dirt, and tension of the past weeks. When my strength finally left me, I dried off, threw a thick terry towel over myself, and, entering the kitchen, first approached the built-in bar. Before opening a bottle, I studied the neatly arranged bottles with markings and seals stating they were shelter property. I settled on cognac. Poured a little, took a sip. The liquid passed in a hot streak down to my stomach, and a warm, almost forgotten sensation of peace spread through my body.
Then I headed to the bedroom and, approaching the bed, folded back the thick thermal blanket, but didn't lie down yet. Instead, I went to the living room, turned on the radio on the built-in multimedia system, alternately tuning into all available channels and radio waves. The panels on the radio center glowed, but the airwaves held the familiar noises and static of these weeks; Earth still showed no signs of life.
Returning to the bedroom, I checked the bedside cabinet, where I found neatly folded pajamas made of soft, warm fabric. I changed and went into the study.
The desk was massive, with two pedestals on the sides. It had ten drawers—and each contained something: besides various electronic junk that was useless now, I was very pleased to find high-quality paper there. Also, there were notebooks in plastic covers, pens, pencils, styluses, spare cartridges, even several "eternal" fountain pens of such an old model I was seeing for the first time. Everything was neatly arranged so that the new owner of this study could use it every day.
Thinking for a moment, I set aside the cognac glass and, taking out a clean sheet, placed it before me. In large, clear letters, I wrote:
URGENT MATTERS:
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Move Colonel Daniels into the shelter.
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Write a program for the drones with the task of sorting products in the warehouses.
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Run power from the shelter to the ATLAS to charge the batteries, provide stable heating for all flight systems, and restart the "SOS" system.
Setting the pen aside, I simply looked at what I had written for a few seconds, understanding that this was now my new life.
"What if there are still many survivors on Earth?" I asked myself with hope. "We haven't been to so many places yet..."
The only thing I wished for at that moment was to wake up tomorrow morning in an ordinary house, with ordinary glass windows, not imitations, for the ordinary sun to shine outside, for birds to still sing high in the sky and leaves to whisper peacefully on the trees...
After all, before the catastrophe, every inhabitant of the planet saw all this daily.
"What have we done!" I sighed with pain.