Kyle West - Revelation

“I can help with nursing,” Lauren said. “I have some experience, though I was never registered with the Bunker.”

“Anything we can get helps,” Makara said. “You can help Char here.”

With that, we broke up. Anna and I headed outside, leaving the bodies of the dead but moving the wounded on board the ships. With everyone in the Exodus working with a single purpose, it was all done in thirty minutes. From there, anyone with any sort of medical experience was assigned to either Ashton’s or Char’s team. Admittedly, that wasn’t much. With Lauren, we had about a dozen people spread across both ships tending the wounded. There was not much we could do for any of them — not with the ships’ limited resources. Painkillers ran out very quickly, along with bandages. It was an impossible ordeal, but it was the best we could do. It was decided that the priority was getting to Pyrite before the swarm closed in on us again.

It was a long, hard journey. The first of that tempest Askal had warned us of closed in just as dawn broke. Of crawlers, there was no sign, but the bleak, cold wind from the north did a sort of work that crawlers could never do. Dozens died from exposure, and where they did, they were left behind, stripped of anything useful. We had become like the monsters we were supposed to be fighting. It took monstrosity to survive in these circumstances. The only thing that kept people going was the promise of warmth, the promise of safety.

In the end, it might have turned out to be an empty promise. Gilgamesh reached Pyrite first, leaving Odin to guard the Exodus’s rear. The people there were hostile, according to Ashton — unwilling to take in either Gilgamesh’s wounded or Odin’s . We weren’t going to get in there with anything short of battle. Not that Pyrite was the strongest town, but the thought of having to fight any more, much less fighting people instead of the monsters behind us, was simply exhausting.

All the same, Makara ordered that fighting men be loaded into both ships along with the wounded, and landed in the city. If there was resistance, then we had orders to take it out. It was desperate, it was amoral, but we didn’t have time for morality. Not with so much on the line. Thankfully, it turned out the leaders of Pyrite had been bluffing. They begrudgingly accepted our takeover, and tents and a large fire were allowed to be set up in the town’s center. The town, at least, was surrounded by a tall wooden fence. Not great, but better than nothing.

While the Raiders, Exiles, and gang members stood guard in the town center, Anna and Makara ferried the ships back and forth, picking up the weakest members of the Exodus before the cold could get to them. Anna had to learn a great deal in order to pilot the ship on her own. However, necessity had been her teacher, and she was able to get the job done. More and more of the Exodus was unloaded in the town until finally, after two days and several ferrying trips, the last of the Exodus was inside the walls of Pyrite.

With everyone inside, we had escaped the xenoswarm, but at great cost. A few days later, a head count revealed that we were now down four hundred and twelve people — about half from the battle, half from the extreme cold. This left us with about sixteen hundred souls. In a single night, we had lost twenty percent of our total force. And if hadn’t been for the Elekai, it would have been one hundred percent.

An inventory of Pyrite’s granaries revealed that, for everyone, there was probably enough food for two weeks. Though angered, the leaders of the small settlement could do nothing about it. In the end, they were forced to join us on our mad journey to escape the growing power of the Great Blight and reach Los Angeles, before it was too late. They soon saw, once they heard our stories, that they would not escape the coming storm. Our numbers had taken a huge hit, but recovered somewhat with the addition of the town.

It was small condolence when so much had happened, and so many additional threats faced us. And with Samuel still out and apparently in a coma, it was only going to get worse. We had to find a shelter large enough for two thousand people, and we had very little time to find it in.

And it was this desperation that led to us to commit our gravest error.

Ashton did his research, and found that Bunker 84 was probably our likeliest bet. Even if it was our closest option for shelter, the Bunker seemed so far away. Bunker 84 was in Northern California, buried in the mountains near the border of what used to be Oregon. It would be far colder there than here, especially given the season — however, as long as we could find a way to get everyone underground, I supposed that wouldn’t matter.

According to Ashton, Bunker 84 had been designed to house one thousand people, making it twice as big as Bunker 108. It had fallen in 2045, three years before even Bunker One had. It had been one link in a chain of consecutive Bunker falls, barely a blip on the radar. Most Bunkers began going offline in the early 2040s, and the huge string of falls hadn’t ceased until the mid-2050s.

The last transmission received from Bunker 84 had come on May 6, 2045, though the Bunker Manifest’s information didn’t give specifics. The Bunker had been offline for more than fifteen years, so it was anyone’s guess as to what happened.

It was eerie, but the fact that Bunker 84 had gone offline so long ago, even before Bunker One, showed that it was highly unlikely to have been caused by the xenovirus. It could have just been abandoned because a critical part had failed. If that was the case, we might be able to get it fixed and have the Bunker online again.

Whether, after the last fifteen years, there was any food, water, or supplies left, remained to be seen. It didn’t seem too likely. All the same, Makara immediately ordered a recon team to check the Bunker out. We were getting desperate for any option, and for now, Bunker 84 was our only option.

Selected for that team were Anna, Michael, Julian, and I. We were selected to fly up there with Odin , find Bunker 84, recon its interior, and return to Pyrite with our findings. Supplies in the town were low, and with the xenoswarm so near, time was of the essence. Makara wanted us there and back in two days.

Nothing, however, could have prepared us for what we found in Bunker 84. It was something so terrible, so horrifying, that I probably would have preferred Blighters.

Kyle West is a science fiction author living in Oklahoma City. He is currently working on The Wasteland Chronicles series, of which there will be seven installments. Find out immediately when his next book is released by signing up for The Wasteland Chronicles Mailing List. The fifth book will be released sometime in December.

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10,000, The:This refers to the 10,000 citizens who were selected in 2029 to enter Bunker One. This group included the best America had to offer, people who were masters in the fields of science, engineering, medicine, and security. President Garland and all the U.S. Congress, as well as essential staff and their families, were chosen.

Alpha:“Alpha” is the title given to the recognized head of the Raiders. In the beginning, it was merely a titular role that only had as much power as the Alpha was able to enforce. But as Raider Bluff grew in size and complexity, the Alpha took on a more meaningful role. Typically, Alphas do not remain so for long — they are assassinated by rivals who rise to take their place. In some years, there can be as many as four Alphas — though powerful Alphas, like Char, can reign for many years.