Bunker Bird

2. Prologue

The bunker is perpetual, man's life is not.

The Manuals of the Bunker, Vol. 2, Verse 8

The young woman spat and watched the glob fall. It curved away and got lost from sight before it hit the ground many meters below.

She wrinkled her nose. "This place stinks like a bat's craphole."

Another woman, her dark hair laced with gray, was sitting next to her. "Don't spit, Amy. You're not a kid anymore."

"Mom... there's no one who'd care." Amy pulled her lips into a thin line. "Not anymore."

"I care," the older one said. "And as to the smell, that's no wonder with all the garbage they send down here. You should pity the folks living in this place."

"I know." She squeezed her mother's arm. "And I do."

For a moment, the two contemplated the scenery in silence. They were sitting on a small platform high up on a wall of a vast underground cavern illuminated by countless lamps hanging from the ceiling. Below them, a solitary figure pushed a wheelbarrow through overgrown heaps of compost, unaware of the two strangers watching him.

Amy pointed at the worker. "I do pity that guy." She dug into her nostril, retrieved a booger, and squinted at it. "Having to shovel the shite fer them fat bastards from the upper cavern." She flicked the snot from her finger.

Her mother sighed. "True, but down here they can at least grow pumpkins on the manure."

"Who'd want to eat those vegetables?" Amy gestured at the compost heaps below, covered with large, green leaves. "They grow from shite, lit'rally."

"They're fruits, actually, not vegetables." 

Amy huffed. "They're shite."

"Still, they'll keep us fed. The stuff we're growing in our tunnels hasn't been enough to keep us fed since the last cave-in."

"True. But I won't eat the garbage from down here. In the upper cavern, they've got real food grown from real earth."

One of the lamps flickered, went out, and came on again. Amy squinted at it. "And in the upper cavern, the lamps are working proper."

Her mother shook her head. "The lights are failing in both caverns, and it keeps getting worse. As to food, that's easier to find down here. In the upper cavern, the guards have been watchful lately. Their captain..." A smile touched her lips. "He knows what he's doing. Be wary of that one." 

"I'm faster than any guard. I'll outrun them any time."

"We've gotta stay hidden, you know that." The mother bent forward and inspected the rickety metal ladder that descended from their platform to the now deserted compost heaps. "Down here, there are no guards, only the garbage workers." She pointed at the cluster of huts the lone worker was heading for. "They don't watch their stuff."

Amy tugged at a strand of her greasy, red hair as she watched the young man jostle his wheelbarrow away from them, uphill towards the far wall of the cavern where the village huddled against the gray, jagged rock.

"True, these shit-shovelers know nothing," Amy said. "But I'll still go to the other cavern to get meself some proper food."

"You're not going anywhere," the woman said. "I don't want you to get caught by the guards. Anyway... Boss said no one is to go into the caverns alone. And as your mother, I totally agree with him."

"Blah-blah, Boss said this, Boss said that. You said it yerself, I'm not a kid anymore. I'll be coming of age next moth. Means I'm too old to get ordered around." Amy rose to her knees and crept towards the hatch that led off the platform.

The mother sighed as her daughter's bare, dirty feet vanished through the opening.

Cursing silently, she followed her into the darkness of the tunnels.

~~~~ 

The shit-shoveler pushing the wheelbarrow, that was me, living my life in the bunker. Like anyone else.

And I had no idea that these two had been watching me that day. In fact, I wasn't even aware of the existence of people like them.

Amy was right—I knew nothing.

But that was about to change.