The Human Condition

anything else, really. Unless something happens to make the surface safe and habitable again, we're all destined to die down here. The trick now is to drag things out as long as possible. Suicide isn't an option yet. I'll only do that if there is absolutely no chance of survival. If I can stay here until the fighting stops then I might be able to survive for a little longer. Who knows? I don't know anything anymore.

    The fight had already been raging for several hours when my lot were ordered to suit up and get ready to go above ground. There was no tactical briefing, because there were no tactics. There was no battle-plan because no-one knew what it was we were going to face. We'd heard rumours of an enemy that numbered into the hundreds of thousands, but there were no hard facts or definite details to make plans around. We were told to go out there and just get rid of as many of them as we could. If it wasn't military, we were told, destroy it. We got ourselves suited up and ready to fight and we'd made it as far as the decontamination chambers when the retreat began.

    I've never seen anything like it, and I pray to God that I never do again. I only managed to get the faintest of glimpses outside before the doors were closed, but it was like hell on earth out there. Our boys were trying to get back inside but it wasn't a controlled fall-back. Blokes were just running for their lives. And behind them... Christ, following them in was a wave of thousands of the fucking things. Huge staggering swarms of these bloody things that looked like corpses. They were decayed and slow and awkward but you could see that they knew what they were doing. I watched them ripping our men and women to shreds. Hundreds of them trampling our lot under their rotten feet and tearing at their suits and their skin. There was nothing they could do against the numbers they were facing. The commander gave the order to lock-down the base and all we could do was watch as the chambers were sealed. Fucking heartbreaking it was to see men and woman that I'd stood alongside and fought next to just left stuck out there. They'd have kept on fighting for as long as they could � I know they would � but the bodies must have got them in the end. Rumour has it there was so many of them that they couldn't close the main bunker doors. There was too much dead meat and abandoned equipment in the way for them to get the bloody doors closed.

    I went back up to the decontamination chambers about a week later with a handful of others to do a check on some of the systems. We tried to look outside but it was dark and we couldn't see much. The hanger was still full of rotting flesh. The bodies were packed so tight against the doors that the bloody things couldn't even move.

    All that happened sixty-five days ago now. Since then I've counted every hour and watched every long minute tick past. Hard to believe how much time has gone. Truth be told, it feels like I've been here ten times longer than that.

    10:17 am.

    Gunfire.

    I just heard gunfire again. Part of me wants to try and find out what's happening but I don't dare move. Maybe when it quietens down again I'll try. I'll have to move sooner or later. I've run out of food. I don't want to but I'm going to have to move soon.

    1:35 pm.

    More fighting. More gunshots and more screams and shouts. Bloody hell, I wonder how many are left alive now? I can still hear screams in the distance. I keep imagining that I recognise the voices but it's probably just my mind playing tricks again. Maybe I should try and get closer now...

    Carlton crawled slowly back down the low tunnel where he'd been hiding. His joints were stiff and aching. He tried to move quietly but, after many long days of inaction, his movements were frustratingly clumsy and uncoordinated. Matters weren't helped by the protective suit which he wore. He'd kept it on because it gave him an extra layer of warmth and, if he was honest, because he was too scared to take it off. What if whatever it was that had done the damage outside managed somehow to get into the base? He had to take a chance and leave the breathing apparatus off. It was too bulky and it slowed him down. He held his loaded pistol tightly in his hand. He wasn't going anywhere without protection.

    The service tunnel led round into a second tunnel which was slightly wider and taller than the first. That tunnel, in turn, eventually connected with a corridor which led back deep into the