The Apocalypse is boring.
A single light bulb hung from the room of a bunker. A plastic table and an old couch dominated the space. The plastic table was mostly covered in a layer of dust except for the area around a disemboweled radio. A man with short brown hair was tinkering with the components, trying to see which part was malfunctioning.
"First the electricity, and now this." Frank grumbled as he put the radio back together. His backup battery power would last a few weeks with minimal usage, but the loss of the radio took away his connection to the outside world.
Turning on the radio again he listened to the static. Turning the knob to change the channel the static continued unabated. The channels had all stopped immediately, or as good as instantly since when he'd been unable to find one word spoken on the radio since it first broke. The power had stopped around the same time so he'd only fiddled with it for a moment.
Frank turned the radio off, then sighed. Aside from tinkering on the radio there was nothing else to do. Though he did have some literature in his bunker he'd discarded that soon after starting since it couldn't draw his mind from what was happening across the world.
There had been a warning, not a drill, about several nuclear warheads being incoming and with a five minute warning until impact. It had been an hour.
He rested his head against the table, lifting it up and wiping the dust from his cheek. There was nothing he could do on the larger scale, but maybe he could at least clean up down here.
Checking the store room he found his store of clean water was still good, so he filled a plastic bowl and grabbed a cloth napkin to use for a rag. He had a few extra place settings that he had stored down here so until he was confident to return to the surface this would have to do. He would wait for at least two days since he had no information from the outside world.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
The dust was easily dispatched which left the couch slightly damp, so he decided to move on into the bedroom. He would make supper afterwards.
Unlike the tidy storeroom that held food and water the bedroom was the dumping ground for anything not needed immediately since he always thought the couch would be comfortable enough. Now that he needs to use it he's having second thoughts about it.
The bedroom was a larger room with three bunk beds that had some cheap mattresses on them. Bedding and pillows were vacuum sealed on one of the lower bunks. The rest of the room was filled with cardboard boxes and small pieces of furniture.
He cleared off the nearest bunk and opened a bag of bedding. Pulling out a large quilt a smaller piece of fabric fell to the ground. It was a small blanket with a cartoon lion depiction and a line of blue threat trailing from the corner. It had started to form a name from a capital C.
Frank grabbed the baby blanket and threw it heedlessly onto another top bunk. Then he crawled into the bed. He wasn't hungry anymore.
The Apocalypse is lonely.
Outside the room the house was eerily quiet. The view outside showed an asphalt road that wound down until abruptly ending at dense foliage. One of the trees had fallen over, revealing a stump that had been perfectly split with only half remaining.
At about waist height a pair of glowing red eyes emerged and a green skinned pointy teethed creature toddled into the yard. It walked along the tree line then stopped. Out it reached and the hand easily passed through the empty space ahead. It pulled a small horn from its belt and made three blows on it, then it sprinted ahead, returning into the woods.