Day Zero
Jesus, what am I even doing? Where do I start?
I got this … Sorry, you... from Jess, my sister. A gift for my sixteenth birthday, but don't think it was out of the kindness of her heart, it was the most insulting thing she could think of at the time. We never got on, Jess and I. She was the beautiful blonde haired, blue eyed queen bee, and I couldn't have been more different. I was the bookish loner, the one always hiding in a corner with her nose in a book – that wouldn't have been so bad, but I wasn't even smart. It wasn't textbooks I lived for, but novels, fantasies, anything to escape from this bitch of a world.
Jess had thrown this at me the morning of my birthday, her porcelain face twisted into a sneer of disdain. 'I figure it’s about time you had a friend,' she'd declared, then walked off laughing. It was a leather bound book, brand new, and the title – your name – Rachael scrawled on the front. A diary. A diary with a fucking name. Thanks Jess.
That was a few years ago now. It took the end of the world, but I figure I'll give it – you – a go. Rachael. Well, I've known a few Rachaels in my time, and every one of them has been a back-stabbing bitch. I hope you prove different.
Jess is long gone.
Everyone is long gone.
Is it bad that I'm not sorry about that?
So I prefer my own company to that of anyone else. So, I prefer my books and daydreams to that of standing about freezing my tits off on street corners with the rest of the dickheads. What of it?
It's a bloody good job, really, considering I seem to be the last person alive in this godforsaken town. For all their smarts, beauty, popularity, they're all dead and I'm still here.
Ha, take that you fucking dipshits!
Alright, now I've got that off my chest, enough of the whining teenager bull. You're probably wondering why they're all dead, eh, Rach? Unlike what the films would have you believe, it wasn't the half-expected killer virus spawning hordes of zombies. It wasn't an alien invasion of E.Ts wanting to phone home. It wasn't even the army of asteroids they say finished off the dinosaurs.
Ha, was it balls!
No, we did this to ourselves. You know that all out nuclear war that's been threatening to erupt for years now? The one America, Russia, even Korea have been pushing for?
Yeah, well, it was that.
All it takes is one man, one button, and poof! everything is gone. God, but people are so stupid!
Were so stupid?
No, if I – an overweight get-out-of-breath-from-running-upstairs loser – can survive, then there has to be other people out there somewhere. Granted, my survival was down to pure dumb luck for the most part, but I can't be the only lucky person on the planet. I'm no 'prepper' as the yankies call them, no ex-army with an arsenal and a vault – well, that's not entirely true, I have the vault. Bunker. I'm nothing like the hero from the films, couldn't be further from them, in fact. I guess my survival can be thanked on a few newspaper articles long before IT happened, and one grumpy old man. One article in particular had listed the location of all UKs 'secret' bunkers, and had then gone on to explain how they were now all derelict or had been turned in to museums.
This, and the rise in tensions between North Korea and America resulted in a wave of private shelters being built. I was lucky enough to have a neighbour with deep enough pockets, but small enough brains, to jump on the bandwagon. He paid for the bunker, made himself the laughingstock of the town as he diligently maintained it, and then didn't even use it himself. It became my hideaway, my escape. I'd spend hours reading down here and good old George would leave me to it.
I was down here when the news hit. I was buried deep into The Ship of Madness when I heard the huge heavy door thump shut. Assuming it was my sister or her friends taking the piss, again, I was surprised to see George's face in the little porthole window. He looked... tired, and so so sad. I can't get his face out of my mind, even after all this time. He held up a piece of paper with a few words hastily scribbled on it.
The door will unlock in 2 years.
Stay safe.
I thought he'd gone mad. I had visions of my parents and the police searching for me. I saw my face flashing across the screen of every television in the country, have you seen this girl? I saw my sister Jess, devastated by how mean she had been to me all these years, desperate for me to come home. I laughed – more of a snort – and turned on the old fashioned fat backed television that George kept down here.
I saw the world on fire.
George had saved my life.
Why? Why didn't he come in, kick me out? There's no way he spent so much money to save the fat weird girl from next door. There's not enough room down here for two, not enough food stored if it had to last for two whole years. This was his safe-haven, and he'd all but forced it on me. The television, the radio, all of it went dead within hours.
So, that's the situation. Two years alone in these same four walls, nothing but my books and tinned food to keep me company. I have electricity, I have water, but I'm running low on food. Any day now that door will unlock, and I'll have to face what's left of the world. Will the radiation still be there? Will I die as soon as I open it? Despite reading the numerous books on nuclear warfare that George had stored down here, I still didn't know a thing. No one knew. It was all just conjecture.
I'm scared. I feel stupid just writing that, but it’s true. I'm not sure what I'm more afraid of; to find the world utterly destroyed – or to find that nothing has changed. That people still go on with their daily lives. That I haven't even been missed.
I guess I need a friend after all. What do you think, Rachael? Are you up to it?